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TYPES OF THE ESSAY 



TYPES OF THE ESSAY 



SELECTED AND EDITED BY 

BENJAMIN A. HEYDRICK, A.M. 

HEAD OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE 
NEW YORK CITY 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



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Copyright, 1921, by 
CHARLES SCBIBNER'S SONS 
A 




PRINTED AT 

THE SCRIBNER PRESS 

NEW YORK, V. S. A. 

JAN 30 ;922 



^0!,A654455 



I CONTENTS 

3 Introduction — 

PAGE 

What Is an Essay? vii 

The History of the Essay viii 

The Types op Essays xi 

How TO Study These Essays xiii 



The Personal Essay — 

A Day in London Richard Steele . . 3 

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig . Charles Lamb . , 13 

Old China Charles Lamb ... 25 

My First Acquaintancl with 

Poets William Hazlitt . . 35 

On Getting Up on Cold Mornings Leigh Hunt .... 63 

On a Lazy Idle Boy W. M. Thackeray . 71 

A College Magazine R. L. Stevenson . . 83 

My Last Walk with the School- 
mistress O.W. Holmes . . 95 

The Descriptive Essay — 

The Sky John Ruskin . . . 105 

The Site of a University . . . J.H. Newman . . 115 

The Sea Fogs R.L. Stevenson . . 125 

Brute Neighbors H.D. Thoreau . . 133 

V 



vi CONTENTS 

The Chakacter Sketch — 

PAGE! 

The Man in Black Oliver Goldsmith . . 147 

The Hunter's Family R. L. Stevenson . . 153 

The Spirit of Theodore Roose- 
velt Julian Street . . . 165 

The Critical Essay — 

What and How to Read .... John Ritskin . . . 175 

Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" T. B. Macaulay . . 193 

H. G. Wells's "Outline of His- 
tory" J . Salwyn Sdiapiro 209 

The Editorial Essay — 

Female Orators Joseph Addison . . 237 

Living in a Pair of Scales . . Joseph Addison . . 245 

The Stage Coach Richard Steele . . 253 

The Reflective Essay — 



Studies; Truth; Travel; Riches; 
Great Place; Friendship . . Francis Bacon . 

The Influence of Books . . . Thomas Carlyle . 

Self-Reliance R. W. Emerson . 

American and Briton John Galsworthy 

Is the World Growing Better? Henry van Dyke . 

Reading List of Essays 



259 
283 
295 
329 
349 

367 



INTRODUCTION 

WHAT IS AN ESSAY? 

Wlien you write a letter to a friend, you tell him what 
you and others have been doing, what you have seen, 
and what you think about various things. People who 
write books do the same thing on a larger scale. A book 
that tells what you have done is an autobiography; a 
book telling what others have done is biography or his- 
tory, or if it deals with imaginary people, it is fiction. A 
book telling what you have seen is travel, and a book tell- 
ing what you think on various topics is a book of essays. 
Yet not all books giving people's thoughts are essays. 
If a man writes a book on religion or philosophy, for 
example, a book made up of various chapters, arrranged 
in such order as to form a systematic and complete 
treatment of the subject, that book would not be called 
an essay but a treatise. The word essay comes from 
the French essai, an attempt, an endeavor. So Francis 
Bacon, the first English essayist, said in the preface to his 
book: ''To write just treatises requireth leisure in the 
writer and leisure in the reader, . . . which is the cause 
that hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, 
set down rather significantly than curiously, which I 
have called essays." 

This gives us the second characteristic of the essay: it 
is brief, and does not attempt to treat a subject either 
completely or systematically. In fact, an essay is a 
sort of literary go-as-you-please. An essayist may, like 
Montaigne, announce as his subject "Coaches," and 
proceed to write about sneezing, the entertainments of 
Roman emperors, and the conquest of Mexico, with only 
a brief mention of coaches. And yet while the essajdst 



viii INTRODUCTION 

may seem to be careless how he begins or where he leaves 
off his subject, there is one thing that he is always careful 
about, his style. More than any other form of prose, the 
essay demands mastery of style. How the thing is said 
is as important — often more important, than what is 
said. This style may take many forms, from the stately, 
thought-weighted sentences of Bacon to the whimsical 
turns of Charles Lamb; it may have the calm and beauty 
of a Newman, or the passionate eloquence of Carlyle : in 
each case we feel that the style is the perfect medium for 
the thought. 

In its lack of logical method, its freedom to stray hither 
and thither, the essay is like good conversation. It is 
like conversation again in its tone, which may be now 
serious, now humorous, now merely playful. Some essay- 
ists, like Ruskin, are always serious; some, like Lamb, 
are nearly always humorous; some, like Addison, are both 
by turns. And the same essay may be partly serious, 
partly humorous. As you read these essays, then, be on 
the watch for a twinkle of the eye. 

To sum up the characteristics of the essay, we may say 
that it is a short piece of prose, not attempting to treat 
its subject completely nor logically, but rather giving the 
author's opinions upon it; opinions which may or may not 
be serious, but which are set forth with a high degree of 
literary art. It usually reveals more or less of the per- 
sonality of the author, and in this respect corresponds 
in prose to the lyric in poetry. 

THE HISTORY OF THE ESSAY 

The essay as a form in modern literature began with 
a French writer, Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 
published two volumes entitled Essais. These dealt with 
such subjects as Fortune, Cannibals, Names, Smells, 



HISTORY OF THE ESSAY ix 

Liars, Virtue, and the like. The book was soon trans- 
lated into English, and had a marked influence upon Eng- 
lish writers. Francis Bacon, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Steven- 
son were readers of Montaigne, and acknowledge their 
debt to him. 

The first English writer of essays was Francis Bacon, 
whose Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral appeared in 
1625, This little volume contained sixty essays, in length 
from two to ten pages; the subjects were all general, 
such as Studies, Riches, Love, Great Place. The tone 
of the essays was grave; one seems to hear the voice of 
the Lord Chief Justice of England delivering his wise 
verdicts upon human affairs. And of all Bacon's works, 
which number fifteen large volumes, dealing with science 
and philosophy, written by the wisest man of his time, 
only this slender book of essays survives to be read to- 
day. 

From the time of Sir Francis Bacon to the beginning 
of the eighteenth century, occasional volumes of essays 
appeared. Such were the Religio Medici of Sir Thomas 
Browne; Several Discourses by Way of Essays, by Abra- 
ham Cowley, and the Miscellanea of Sir William Temple. 
But the great development of the essay came with the 
rise of periodical literature in England. 

In our day, with the newspapers thrust into our hands 
twice a day, and with newsstands piled with weekly and 
monthly journals, it is hard to imagine a time when 
neither newspaper nor magazine existed. Yet in 1688 
this was exactly the situation in England. Newspapers 
were the first to appear; then in 1691 came the first maga- 
zine, the Athenian Gazette, a little sheet made up chiefly 
of questions and answers. In 1704 Daniel Defoe, the 
author of Robinson Crusoe, began a journal called A 
Weekly Review of the Affairs of France, which contained, 
in addition to the news from Europe, a short essay or 



X INTRODUCTION 

editorial. This idea was still further developed by 
Richard Steele, who in 1709 began the publication of 
the Tatler, a weekly paper consisting of a single large 
sheet printed on both sides, containing a paragraph of 
news and one or more essays. After a few numbers of 
the paper had appeared, Steele was aided by his friend 
Joseph Addison. The Tatler became popular; its editors 
saw an opportunity for improving it, and in 1711 they 
discontinued the Tatler and began the Spectator. This 
was published at first three times a week, then daily; it 
contained no news, merely a single essay, and a few adver- 
tisements. The essays covered a wide range of topics. 
They did not touch politics, but with this exception they 
treated almost every topic of interest to the Londoner of 
the day. There were papers on duelling, on the Italian 
opera, on fashionable slang, on style in women's dress, 
on the treatment of servants, on education, on courtship 
and marriage. And in practically all these essays the 
writers had the same aim as an editorial writer of to-day: 
to bring to public attention some wrong or folly that 
ought to be corrected. The editors did not deal with 
great public questions, or with crimes punishable by law, 
but with matters of behavior and the customs of the time. 
These papers thus show a new type of essay: that which is 
written to influence public opinion in some particular 
direction. This may be called the editorial essay. 

The success of the Spectator led to many imitations. 
Dr. Johnson wrote the Rambler and the Idler. Oliver 
Goldsmith wrote a series of papers called The Citizen of 
the World, and there were hundreds of others. But none 
of them equalled the work of Addison and Steele, the 
founders of the type. 

The next development of the essay was also a result 
of the development of periodical literature. The early 
journals were affairs of only a few pages. But with the 



THE TYPES OF ESSAYS xi 

beginning of the nineteenth centurj'' we have the ap- 
pearance of magazines, pubHshed monthly or quarterly, 
of a size to permit the publication of long articles. The 
Edinburgh Review was established in 1802; the Quarterly 
Review in 1809, Blackwood's Magazine in 1817, the London 
Magazine in 1820. The rivalry between these journals 
led them to pay contributors liberally, and to allow much 
freedom to these writers. Hence such authors as Ma- 
caulay, Lamb, De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Hunt were 
stimulated to do their best. Macaulay, with his wide 
reading and his marvellous memorj^, could write for the 
Edinburgh a book review in which he discussed not only 
the book itself, and all the subjects mentioned in it, but 
other subjects which the author should have discussed, 
but did not. Charles Lamb, who by day was a book- 
keeper, by night read his favorite authors, and wrote his 
whimsical essays for the London Magazine. Hazlitt and 
De Quincey, both great readers and famous as talkers, 
could pour out their talk on paper at the rate of a guinea 
a printed page. So with the advent of the modern maga- 
zine came the full development of the critical and descrip- 
tive and personal essays as we know them to-day. The 
magazine has continued to be the medium for the first 
publication of almost all essays. Carlyle published his 
Sartor Resarius in Eraser's Magazine ; Thackeray's Round- 
about Papers were written for the Cornhill; Stevenson's 
earlier essays appeared in the Cornhill, his later ones in 
Scribner's; Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table was 
published in the Atlantic, and Van Dyke's essays in Scrib- 
ner's. 

THE TYPES OF ESSAYS 

When we read Lamb's essay on Old China, we do not 
learn very much about porcelain, but we learn a good deal 
about Charles Lamb, his likes and dislikes. Such essays, 



xii INTRODUCTION 

aiming primarily to entertain, and revealing the person- 
ality of the author, are called personal essays. To this 
group belong the writings of Thackeray, of Hazlitt, and 
most of Stevenson. As we read their essays we grow 
better and better acquainted with the writers. Mon- 
taigne, who was the first to write essays of this type, 
says in the introduction to his book, " It is myself I por- 
tray." So the personal essay, or, as it is sometimes 
called, the familiar essay, forms a distinct class, and in- 
cludes some of the most noted essays in English litera- 
ture. 

The descriptive essay is self-explanatory. It may deal 
with the larger aspects of nature, as Ruskin's description 
of the skj'-, or with animals, as Thoreau's Brute Neigh- 
bors, or indeed with any created thing. It differs from 
pure description in that you are always conscious of the 
author: he tells what he thinks as weU as what he sees. 
Thus Thoreau begins by asking questions about natm-e, 
and Ruskin closes with an appeal to let the beauty of the 
sky strengthen our faith. Such touches mark the writ- 
ing as belonging to the essay type. 

The character sketch differs from the description in 
that while the description deals with the outward appear- 
ance, the character sketch deals with the inner man. 
It may have as its subject an imaginary individual, as 
Goldsmith's Man in Black, or real persons, as in Julian 
Street's portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. 

In the critical essay, the subject is usually a work of 
art. It may be a book, a painting, an opera, a statue, or 
an architectural work. When Macaulay wrote a review 
of a new edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, or when a 
critic of to-day writes an account of a new book or play, 
each tells us something about the contents of the book, 
and in addition gives his opinion, in the form of praise 
or blame. Or the critical essay may be general, as when 



HOW TO STUDY ESSAYS xiii 

Ruskin tells us how to choose books and how to read 
them. 

Another type is the editorial essay, or that which is 
published in a periodical with the aim of influencing pub- 
lic opinion. It is necessary to distinguish between the 
editorial and the editorial essay. Most editorials are 
really brief arguments: they are plain in style, they aim 
at convincing their readers and nothing more. Such 
articles cannot be called essays. But the writers of the 
Spectator aimed to entertain their readers quite as much 
as to persuade them; they gave careful attention to their 
style, and they so imbued what they wrote with their 
own personality that it has power to charm us yet. There 
are occasional articles of the essay type on the editorial 
pages of our newspapers: sometimes a column regularly 
appears, such as the "Topics of the Times" in the New 
York Times, made up of brief papers which in mood 
and form are true essays. 

The reflective essay differs from the others in two 
respects: its subjects are general, often abstract, and its 
tone is serious. Francis Bacon writing upon Studies, 
Emerson writing upon Self-Reliance, Carlyle writing 
upon the Influence of Books, John Galsworthy writing 
upon the differences between Americans and English- 
men, are examples of the reflective essay at its best. In 
each case the writer is a man with a philosophic mind, 
one who looks beneath the appearance of things to find 
realities; each has thought deeply upon an important sub- 
ject, and in the essay gives his matured conclusions. 

HOW TO STUDY THESE ESSAYS 

First, do not expect to find a story. Short stories are 
delightful — and simple. Anybody can read them ; a child 
can understand them. A taste for essays is like a taste 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

for olives: it must be cultivated. An essay requires more 
attention to read than a story, and it repays you by giving 
you more to think about. 

The essays in each group should be read with a different 
purpose. In the personal essays, ask yourself what each 
one shows about the man who wrote it. How many of 
these experiences are like your own? What bits of 
humor do you find? What ideas that are well ex- 
pressed ? 

For the descriptive essays, read slowly and try to see 
with your imagination the pictures presented. Recall 
similar sights you have seen. Try to write something 
yourself in imitation of one of these descriptions. 

In reading a character sketch, ask yourself such ques- 
tions as these: What are the chief traits of the person 
portrayed? How are these made clear, by stating them 
or by giving instances to illustrate the point? Why did 
the writer choose this particular person as his subject? 
Does he give his opinion of the person directly, or does 
he let you infer it? 

In the critical essays, note how fully the writers tell 
about the books they discuss. Few books are reviewed 
at such length as Professor Schapiro's review of Wells's 
History, and few are reviewed so well. What qualifica- 
tions should one have to review a book? What should be 
his aim : to tell the contents of a book ? to praise it so that 
it may sell ? to attack it ? to show his own cleverness ? to 
point out its merits and faults without prejudice? Which 
of these aims is seen in Macaulay's review ? in Schapiro's ? 
Has either one an introduction? a conclusion? Point 
out the extent of each. Compare these reviews with 
other essays as regards logical arrangement. 

For the editorial essays, state in a sentence the point 
which the writer wished to make. Why did he introduce 
imaginary characters? What subjects might engage the 



HOW TO STUDY ESSAYS xv 

attention of the Spectator to-day? Try to treat one of 
them in the Spectator manner. 

The reflective essay demands careful reading, sentence 
by sentence, to get its meaning. As you read, note sen- 
tences that contain ideas new to you, or particularly 
well expressed, and copy them into a note-book. Form 
the habit of making quotations from what you read. 
As you finish each essay, ask yourself what new ideas you 
have gained. What do essays give you that fiction does 
not? 

The writers in this book represent the leading essayists 
of England and America. In the biographies of these au- 
thors, given in the notes, you will find the titles of various 
books of essays written by these men; other volumes of 
essays are given in the list at the end of the book. Some 
of these books you will read in the library, some of them 
you ought to own. 



THE PERSONAL ESSAY 



RICHARD STEELE 
A DAY IN LONDON 



Richard Steele (1672-1729) was born in Dublin. At 
twelve years of age he was sent to the Charterhouse School 
in London, where he met Joseph Addison and the two be- 
came fast friends. He entered Oxford, but left without 
a degree; soon afterward he entered the army. After 
some years Captain Steele of the Guards became inter- 
ested in writing. Several of his plays were produced at 
the Drury Lane Theatre : the best of these was a comedy, 
The Tender Husband. Encouraged by success, Steele re- 
signed from the army and devoted himself to literature. 
He knew Pope and Swift and most of the WTiters of the 
day, and still kept up his friendship with Addison. In 
1709 he started a paper of his own, the Tatler, which was 
the beginning of the periodical essay. (See Introduction, 
p. X.) This was later followed by the Spectator; to both 
periodicals Addison was a frequent contributor, but the 
plan was Steele's and he first sketched the members of 
the famous Spectator Club. In the first volume of the 
Tatler Steele thus set forth its purpose: 

"The general purpose of this paper is to expose the 
false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, 
vanity and affectation, and to recommend a general 
simplicity in our dress, our discourse and our behavior." 

But Steele was not always bent upon reforming society. 
In the paper here quoted, as in many others, he writes to 
entertain his readers, and at the end he tries desperately 
to find a moral. This essay gives an account of a day 
of his own fife: reading between the lines, we learn not 
a little about lively Dick Steele. 



I 



RICHARD STEELE 
A DAY IN LONDON 

(From the Taller) 

It is an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of the 
world, and be of no character or significancy in it. 

To be ever unconcerned, and ever looking on new ob- 
jects with an endless curiosity, is a delight known only 
to those who are turned for speculation: nay, they who 
enjoy it must value things only as they are the objects 
of speculation, without drawing any worldly advantage 
to themselves from them, but just as they are what con- 
tribute to their amusement, or the improvement of the 
mind. I lay one night last week at Richmond; and being 
restless, not out of dissatisfaction, but a certain busy 
inclination one sometimes has, I rose at four in the morn- 
ing, and took boat for London, with a resolution to rove 
by boat and coach for the next four-and-twenty hours, 
till the many different objects I must needs meet with 
should tire my imagination, and give me an inclination 
to a repose more profound than I was at that time capa- 
ble of. I beg people's pardon for an odd humor I am 
guilty of, and was often that day, which is saluting any 
person whom I like, whether I know him or not. This 
is a particularity which would be tolerated in me, if they 
considered that the greatest pleasure I know I receive 
at my eyes, and that I am obliged to an agreeable person 
for coming abroad into my view, as another is for a visit 
of conversation at their own houses. 

3 



4 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

The hours of the day and night are taken up in the 
cities of London and Westminster, by people as different 
from each other as those who are born in different cen- 
tiu-ies. Men of six o'clock give way to those of nine, 
they of nine to the generation of twelve; and they of 
twelve disappear, and make room for the fashionable 
world, who have made two o'clock the noon of the day. 

When we first put off from shore, we soon fell in with 
a fleet of gardeners, bound for the several market ports 
of London; and it was the most pleasing scene imaginable 
to see the cheerfulness with which those industrious 
people plied their way to a certain sale of their goods. 
The banks on each side are as well peopled, and beautified 
with as agreeable plantations, as any spot on the earth; but 
the Thames itself, loaded with the product of each shore, 
added very much to the landscape. It was very easy to 
observe by their sailing, and the countenances of the 
ruddy virgins, who were supercargoes, the parts of the 
town to which they were bound. There was an air in 
the purveyors for Covent-garden, who frequently con- 
verse with morning rakes, very unlike the seeming so- 
briety of those bound for Stocks-market. 

Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage; but I 
landed with ten sail of apricot-boats, at Strand-bridge, 
after having put in at Nine-Elms, and taken in melons, 
consigned by Mr. Cuffe, of that place, to Sarah Sewell 
and Company, at their stall in Covent-garden. We 
arrived at Strand-bridge at six of the clock, and were 
unloading, when the hackney-coachmen of the fore- 
going night took their leave of each other at the Dark- 
house, to go to bed before the day was too far spent. 
Chimney-sweepers passed by us as we made up to the 
market, and some raillery happened between one of the 
fruit-wenches and those black men about the Devil and 
Eve, with allusion to their several professions. I could 



RICHARD STEELE 5 

not believe any place more entertaining than Covent- 
garden; where I strolled from one fruit-shop to another, 
with crowds of agreeable young women around me, who 
were purchasing fruit for their respective families. 

It was almost eight of the clock before I could leave 
that variety of objects. I took coach and followed a 
young lady, who tripped into another just before me, at- 
tended by her maid. I saw immediately she was of the 
family of the Vainloves. There are a set of these, who, 
of all things, affect the play of Blind-man's-buff, and 
leading men into love for they know not whom, who are 
fled they know not where. This sort of woman is usually 
a jaunty slattern; she hangs on her clothes, plays her 
head, varies her posture, and changes place incessantly, 
and all with an appearance of striving at the same time 
to hide herself, and yet give you to understand she is in 
humor to laugh at you. You must have often seen the 
coachmen make signs with their fingers, as they drive 
by each other, to intimate how much they have got that 
day. They can carry on that language to give intelli- 
gence where they are driving. In an instant my coach- 
man took the wink to pursue; and the lady's driver gave 
the hint that he was going through Long-acre toward 
St. James's; while he whipped up James-street, we drove 
for King-street, to save the pass at St. Martin's-lane. 
The coachmen took care to meet, jostle, and threaten 
each other for way, and be entangled at the end of New- 
port-street and Long-acre. The fright, you must believe, 
brought down the lady's coach-door, and obliged her, 
with her mask off, to inquire into the bustle, — when she 
sees the man she would avoid. The tackle of the coach- 
window is so bad she cannot draw it up again, and she 
drives on sometimes wholly discovered, and sometimes 
half-escaped, according to the accident of carriages in 
her way. One of these ladies keeps her seat in a hackney- 



6 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

coach as well as the best rider does on a managed horse. 
The laced shoe on her left foot, with a careless gesture, 
just appearing on the opposite cushion, held her both 
firm, and in a proper attitude to receive the next jolt. 

As she was an excellent coach-woman, many were the 
glances at each other which we had for an hour and a 
half, in all parts of the town, by the skill of our drivers; 
till at last my lady was conveniently lost, with notice 
from her coachman to ours to make off, and he should 
hear where she went. This chase was now at an end: 
and the fellow who drove her came to us, and discovered 
that he was ordered to come again in an hour, for that 
she was a silk-worm. I was surprised with this phrase, 
but found it was a cant among the hackney fraternity for 
their best customers, women who ramble twice or thrice 
a week from shop to shop, to turn over all the goods in 
town without buying anything. The silk-worms are, it 
seems, indulged by the tradesmen; for, though they never 
buy, they are ever talking of new silks, laces, and ribbons, 
and serve the owners in getting them customers, as their 
common dunners do in making them pay. 

The day of people of fashion began now to break, 
and carts and hacks were mingled with equipages of 
show and vanity; when I resolved to walk it out of cheap- 
ness; but my unhappy curiosity is such, that I find it 
always my interest to take coach; for some odd adventure 
among beggars, ballad-singers, or the like, detains and 
throws me into expense. It happened so immediately: 
for at the corner of Warwick-street, as I was listening to 
a new ballad, a ragged rascal, a beggar who knew me, 
came up to me, and began to turn the eyes of the good 
company upon me, by telling me he was extremely poor, 
and should die in the street for want of drink, except I 
immediately would have the charity to give him sixpence 
to go into the next ale-house and save his life. He urged. 



RICHARD STEELE 7 

with a melancholy face, that all his family had died of 
thirst. All the mob have humor, and two or three began 
to take the jest; by which Mr. Sturdy carried his point, 
and let me sneak off to a coach. As I drove along, it 
was a pleasing reflection to see the world so prettily 
checkered since I left Richmond, and the scene still filling 
with cliildren of a new hour. 

This satisfaction increased as I moved toward the city; 
and gay signs, well-disposed streets, magnificent public 
structures, and wealthy shops adorned with contented 
faces, made the joy still rising till we came into the centre 
of the city, and centre of the world of trade, the Ex- 
change of London. As other men in the crowds about 
me were pleased with their hopes and bargains, I found 
my account in observing them, in attention to their sev- 
eral interests. I, indeed, looked upon myself as the 
richest man that walked the Exchange that day; for 
my benevolence made me share the gains of every bar- 
gain that was made. It was not the least of my satis- 
faction in my survey, to go upstairs, and pass the shops 
of agreeable females; to observe so many pretty hands 
busy in the folding of ribbons, and the utmost eagerness 
of agreeable faces in the sale of patches, pins, and wires, 
on each side of the counters, was an amusement in which 
I could longer have indulged myself, had not the dear 
creatures called to me, to ask what I wanted, when I 
could not answer, only "To look at you." I went to one 
of the windows which opened to the area below, where 
all the several voices lost their distinction, and rose up 
in a confused hmnming; which created in me a reflec- 
tion that could not come into the mind of any but of one 
a little too studious; for I said to myself with a kind of 
pun in thought, "What nonsense is all the hurry of this 
world to those who are above it?" In these, or not 
much wiser thoughts, I had like to have lost my place at 



8 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

the chop-house, where every man, according to the nat- 
ural bashfulness or sullenness of our nation, eats in a 
pubhc room a mess of broth, or chop of meat, in dumb 
silence, as if they had no pretense to speak to each other 
on the foot of being men, except they were of each other's 
acquaintance. 

I went afterward to Robin's, and saw people, who had 
dined with me at the five-penny ordinary just before, 
give bills for the value of large estates; and could not but 
behold with great pleasure, property lodged in, and trans- 
ferred in a moment from, such as would never be masters 
of half as much as is seemingly in them, and given from 
them, every day they live. But before five in the after- 
noon I left the city, came to my common scene of Covent- 
garden, and passed the evening at Will's* in attending 
the discourses of several sets of people, who relieved each 
other within my hearing on the subjects of cards, dice, 
love, learning, and politics. The last subject kept me 
till I heard the streets in the possession of the bellman, 
who had now the world to himself, and cried, "Past two 
o'clock." This roused me from my seat; and I went to 
my lodgings, led by a light, whom I put into the dis- 
course of his private economy, and made him give me an 
account of the charge, hazard, profit, and loss of a family 
that depended upon a link, with a design to end my trivial 
day with the generosity of sixpence, instead of a third 
part of that sum. When I came to my chambers, I writ 
down these minutes; but was at a loss what instruction 
I should propose to my reader from the enumeration of 
so many insignificant matters and occurrences; and I 
thought it of great use, if they could learn with me to 
keep their minds open to gratification, and ready to re- 
ceive it from any thing it meets with. This one circum- 

* Will's, a famous coffee-house in Russell Street, London, fre- 
quented by literary men. 



RICHARD STEELE 9 

stance will make every face you see give you the satis- 
faction you now take in beholding that of a friend; will 
make every object a pleasing one; will make all the good 
which arrives to any man, an increase of happiness to 
yourself. 



CHARLES LAMB 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 



Charles Lamb (1775-1834) has been called the best 
loved of English writers. He was the son of a poor 
London clerk, and attended as a charity scholar the fa- 
mous boys' school Christ's Hospital. Here he learned 
the Latin which he is fond of introducing in his essays; 
here he met Coleridge, and they became lifelong friends. 
When school-days ended, Coleridge went to the uni- 
versity, and Lamb became a bookkeeper in a London 
office. His work in this place is described in two essays, 
The South Sea House, and The Superannuated Man. He 
lived with his sister Mary, who appears in the essays as 
Bridget Elia. With her he wrote the Tales from Shake- 
speare, which have introduced the plays to many young 
readers. His chief work is the Essays of Elia. These 
were contributed to the London Magazine, over the sig- 
nature of James Elia, a fellow-clerk in the office. Lamb's 
style is unique. He was a great reader of EHzabethan 
literature, especially plays, and frequently uses quaint 
old words from these books. He is fond of giving an un- 
expected turn to his sentences, and humor, a quiet, sly 
humor, peeps out everywhere. 

In connection with the essay on Roast Pig, it is interest- 
ing to read this letter of Lamb's, addressed to a farmer 
and his wife: 

Twelfth Day, '23. 

The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear 
pigmy. There was some contention as to who should 
have the ears; but in spite of his obstinacy, (deaf as these 
little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one of 
them. . . . 

He must have been the least of his race. His little 
foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take 
him 'to have been a Chinese, and a female. 

He crackled delicately. 

I left a blank at the top of the page, not being deter- 
mined which to address it to: so farmer and farmer's 
wife will please to divide our thanks. May your gran- 
aries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens 
plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your la- 
borers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is 

1^^§- Yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 



CHARLES LAMB 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

(From the Essays of Elia, First Series) 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend 
M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for 
the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, 
clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they 
do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely 
hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter 
of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind 
of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' 
Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art 
of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the 
elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner 
following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into 
the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect 
mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest 
son Bo-bo, a gi-eat lubberly boy, who being fond of play- 
ing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let 
some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kin- 
dling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of 
their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together 
with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a 
building, you may think it), what was of much more 
importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than 
nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed 
a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that 
we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as 
you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, 
which his father and he could easily build up again with 

13 



14 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or two, at 
any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was think- 
ing what he should say to his father, and wringing his 
hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely 
sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent 
which he had before experienced. What could it pro- 
ceed from? — not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt 
that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the first 
accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less 
did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. 
A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed 
his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next 
stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of 
life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he ap- 
plied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of 
the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his 
fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's 
life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he 
tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the 
pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his 
fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke 
into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt 
so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering 
himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up 
whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, 
and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fash- 
ion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed 
with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, 
began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, 
as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more 
than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which 
he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him 
quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those 
remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could 



CHARLES LAMB 15 

not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end 
of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situa- 
tion, something like the following dialogue ensued. 

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there de- 
vouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down 
three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to 
you ! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what — 
what have you got there, I say?" 

"O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how nice 
the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his 
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a 
son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rend- 
ing it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into 
the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the 
burnt pig, father, only taste — O Lord!" — with such-like 
barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he 
would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put 
his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when 
the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his 
son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his 
turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour 
mouths he would for a pretense, proved not altogether 
displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript 
here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly set down 
to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched aU 
that remained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for 
a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of im- 
proving upon the good meat which God had sent them.. 



16 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed 
that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently 
than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
Some would break out in broad day, others in the night- 
time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house 
of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was 
the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed 
to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length 
they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and 
father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, 
then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, 
the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury 
begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits 
stood accused, might be handed into the box. He 
handled it, and they all handled it; and burning their 
fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, 
and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, 
against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge 
which judge had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole 
court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present — 
without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation 
whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of 
Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 
manifest iniquity of the decision: and when the court 
was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs 
that could be had for love or money. In a few days 
his lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. 
The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be 
seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew 
enormously dear all over the district. The insurance- 
offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter 
and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very 
science of architecture would in no long time be lost to 



CHARLES LAMB 17 

the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, 
till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, 
like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of 
swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
{burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consum- 
ing a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude 
form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came 
in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 
most useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make 
their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext 
for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire 
(especially in these days) could be assigned in favor of 
any cuhnary object, that pretext and excuse might be 
found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edihilis* I 
will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 6b- 
soniorum.'f 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — these hobbledehoys — but a young and ten- 
der suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the 
sty — with no original speck of the a?nor immunditice,X the 
hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest — his 
voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish 
treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner or prcelitdium^ 
of a grunt. 

He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our an- 
cestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice 
of the exterior tegument ! 

* Mundus edihilis, world of eatables, 
t Princeps ohsoniorum, the chief of viands. 
% Amor immundilice., the love of dirt. 
$ Praeludium, prelude. 



18 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that 
of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, 
crackling, as it is well called — the very teeth are invited 
to their share of the pleasure at this banquet, in over- 
coming the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive 
oleaginous — O call it not fat! but an indefinable sweet- 
ness growing up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — 
fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first 
innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child- 
pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of ani- 
mal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) 
so blended and running into each other, that both to- 
gether make but one ambrosian result or common sub- 
stance. 

Behold him while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather a 
refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so 
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string ! 
Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of 
that tender age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes — ra- 
diant jellies — shooting stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to 
the grossness and indocility which too often accompany 
maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would have proved a 
glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — 
wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation — from these 
sins iie is happily snatched away — 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care, — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while his 
stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal-heaver 
bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre 
in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — and 
for such a tomb might be content to die. 



CHARLES LAMB 19 

He is the best of sapors.* Pine-apple is great. She 
is indeed ahnost too transcendent — a delight, if not sin- 
ful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced 
person would do well to pause, — too ravishing for mortal 
taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that ap- 
proach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a plea- 
sure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity 
of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she med- 
dleth not with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger 
might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative 
of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness 
of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten 
on him, and the weakling refuse th not his mild juices. 

Unhke to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to 
be unravelled without hazard, he is — good thi-oughout. 
No part of him is better or worse than another. He help- 
eth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is 
the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart 
a share of the good things of this life which fall to their 
lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest 
I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his 
relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Pres- 
ents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, 
partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame 
villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, 
I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a 
stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
"give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Me- 
thinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavors 
to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house slightingly 
* Sapor, flavor, taste. 



20 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

(under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a bless- 
ing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to 
my individual palate. — It argues an insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end 
of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice 
thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening 
with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my 
way to school (it was over London Bridge) a gray-headed 
old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day, 
that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console 
him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very 
coxcombry of charity, schoolboy like, I made him a pres- 
ent of — the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed 
up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of 
seK-satisf action ; but, before I had got to the end of the 
bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into 
tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good 
aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger that 
I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for 
aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt 
would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not 
another — would eat her nice cake — and what should I 
say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I was 
to part with her pretty present! — and the odor of that 
spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the plea- 
sure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, 
and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disap- 
pointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in 
my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit 
of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness; 
and above all I wished never to see the face again of that 
insidious, good-for-nothing, old gray impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death 



CHARLES LAMB 21 

with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obso- 
lete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would 
be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) 
what effect this process might have toward intenerating 
and dulcifying a substance naturally so mild and dulcet 
as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. 
Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhu- 
manity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It 
might impart a gusto. — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, 
supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death 
by whipping (joer flageUationem extremam*) superadded a 
pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any 
possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man 
justified in using that method of putting the animal to 
death?" I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a 
dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I be- 
seech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole 
hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out 
with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot 
13oison them, or make them stronger than they are — but 
consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 

* Per flagellationem, through capital punishment by whipping. 



CHARLES LAMB 
OLD CHINA 



Few passages in the history of English literature are 
more touching than the story of Charles and Mary Lamb. 
She was ten years his senior; the mother was an invalid, 
so that as a child Charles was cared for by his sister. 
There was a trait of insanity in the family. When 
Charles was twenty-one, Mary, her mind affected by a 
long strain, became insane, and killed her mother. She 
was placed in an asylum, and although she regained her 
reason, she was only released upon the solemn pledge of 
her brother that he would watch over her. From time 
to time the affliction recurred, and the brother would take 
her to the asylum for a season. At other times she was 
an ideal companion, interested in books as Charles was, 
helping him to write his Tales from Shakespeare, making 
a pleasant home for him, where his friends Hazlitt, 
Coleridge, Godwin, Haydon the painter, and Words- 
worth formed a famous group. Yet over all their life 
hung the shadow. Charles, faithful to his sister, never 
sought to marry. They had been very poor, but as 
Charles's literary work gradually won recognition, their 
circumstances became easier, even allowing a few luxuries. 
They were both intensely fond of the theatre, and num- 
bered among their friends some of the best actors of the 
day. Such are the materials out of which Lamb made 
the essay on Old China. Mary appears there as Bridget; 
all their pleasures and the sweet intimacy of their lives 
are told, but the shadow is not there. Like Stevenson, 
Lamjc) resolutely carried his own burden; it might be 
heavy, but no whimper or groan escapes into his pages. 



CHARLES LAMB 

OLD CHINA 

(From the Essays of Elia, Second Series) ' 

I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china- 
closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot de- 
fend the order of preference, but by saying that we have 
all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of 
our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. 
I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, 
that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when 
china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagina- 
tion. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now have? 
— to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, 
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- 
cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec- 
tive — a china tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot 
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our 
optics), yet on terra firma still — for so we must in courtesy 
interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous 
artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up be- 
neath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, 
if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea 
to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance 
seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or 
another — for Hkeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping 

25 



26 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this 
calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in 
a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) 
must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — 
a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their 
world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.* 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive — 
so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of 
fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink 
unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa 
miracula\ upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a 
recent purchase) which we were now for the fii-st time us- 
ing; and could not help remarking, how favorable circum- 
stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford 
to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — 
when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows 
of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer 
clouds in Bridget. 

"I wish the good old times would come again," she 
said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean 
that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state" — 
so she was pleased to ramble on, — "in which I am sure 
we were a great deal happier. A pm-chase is but a pur- 
chase> now that you have money enough and to spare. 
Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had to get you to 
consent in those times !) — we were used to have a debate 
two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, 
and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving 
we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A 

* Hays, an old EngKsh dance, where the dancers stood in a ring, 
t Speciosa miracula, beautiful marvels. 



CHARLES LAMB 27 

thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money 
that we paid for it. 

"Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon 
you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late 
at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you re- 
member how we eyed it for weeks before we could make 
up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a 
determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday 
night, when you set off from IsUngton, fearing you should 
be too late — and when the old bookseller with some 
grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper 
(for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from 
his dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, wish- 
ing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you presented 
it to me — and when we were exploring the perfectness of 
it (collating, you called it) — and while I was repairing 
some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impa- 
tience would not suffer to be left till daybreak — was there 
no pleasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat black 
clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep 
brushed, since we have become rich and finical — give 
you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it 
about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau* — for 
four or five weeks longer than you should have done to 
pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — 
or sixteen shillings was it? — a great affair we thought it 
then — which you had lavished on the old foho. Now 
you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I 
do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old pur- 
chases now. 

"When you came home with twenty apologies for lay- 
ing out a less number of shillings upon that print 
* Corbeau, a crow, a raven. 



28 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

after Lionardo,* which we chi-istened the 'Lady Blanch'; 
when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the 
money — and thought of the money, and looked again at 
the picture — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? 
Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, 
and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you? 

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, 
and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday 
— holidays and all other fun are gone now we are 
rich — and the little hand-basket in which I used to de- 
posit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad — and 
how you would pry about at noontide for some decent 
house, where we might go in and produce our store — only 
paying for the ale that you must call for — and speculate 
upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was 
likely to allow us a tablecloth — and wish for such another 
honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one 
on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a-fish- 
ing — and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, 
and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us — 
but we had cheerful looks stUl for one another, and 
would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging 
Piscatorf his Trout Hall? Now — when we go out a 
day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we ride part 
of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the best of 
dinners, never debating the expense — which, after all, 
never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, 
when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a 
precarious welcome. 

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but 
in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to 
sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender 

* Lionardo, Leonardo da Vinci ; perhaps the picture referred to is 
the "Mona Lisa." 

t Piscator, the name of the fisherman in Walton's Compleat Angler. 



CHARLES LAMB 29 

of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children 
in the Wood — when we squeezed out our shilUngs apiece 
to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling 
gallery — where you felt all the time that you ought not 
to have brought me — and more strongly I felt obligation 
to you for having brought me — and the pleasure was the 
better for a little shame — and when the curtain drew up, 
what cared we for our place in the house, or what mat- 
tered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were 
with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of 
Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the best 
place of all for enjoying a play socially — that the relish 
of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infre- 
quency of going — that the company we met there, not 
being in general readers of plays, were obhged to attend 
the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the 
stage — because a word lost would have been a chasm 
which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such 
reflections we consoled our pride then — and I appeal to 
you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less at- 
tention and accommodation than I have done since in 
more expensive situations in the house? The getting in, 
indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient stair- 
cases, was bad enough — but there was still a law of civility 
to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as we 
ever found in the other passages — and how a little diffi- 
culty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play, 
afterwards ! Now we can only pay our money and walk 
in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I 
am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — but 
sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 

"There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they 
became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while 
they were yet dear — to have them for a nice supper, a 
treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to 



30 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties a little 
above om' means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is 
the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what 
the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat — 
when two people, living together as we have done, now 
and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which 
both hke; while each apologizes, and is willing to take 
both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no 
harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense 
of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much 
of others. But now — what I mean by the word — we 
never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor 
can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but 
persons as we were, just above poverty. 

"I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet,— and 
much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of 
December to account for our exceedings — many a long 
face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in 
contriving to make it out how we had spent so much — or 
that we had not spent so much — or that it was impossible 
we should spend so much next year — and still we found 
our slender capital decreasing — but then, — betwixt ways, 
and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, 
and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without 
that for the future — and the hope that youth brings, and 
laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), 
we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 'lusty 
briromers' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful 
Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in the 
'coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at 
the end of the old year — no flattering promises about the 
new year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 



CHARLES LAMB 31 

how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling 
at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination 
had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hun- 
dred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when 
we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. 
I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were 
to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much 
mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, 
as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thank- 
ful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We 
could never have been what we have been to each other, 
if we had always had the sufficiency which you now com- 
plain of. The resisting power — those natural dilations 
of the youthful spuit, which circumstances cannot 
straiten — with us are long since passed away. Com- 
petence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supple- 
ment indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We 
must ride where we formerly walked: live better and lie 
softer — and shall be wise to do so — than we had means 
to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could 
those days return — could you and I once more walk our 
thirty miles a day — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland 
again be young, and you and I be young to see them — 
could the good old one-shilling gallery days return — they 
are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I at 
this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our 
well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa — be 
once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, 
pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
rabble of poor gallery scramblers — could I once more 
hear those anxious shrieks of yours — and the delicious 
Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the 
topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole 
cheerful theatre down beneath us — I know not the fathom 
line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be 



32 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or 

the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. 

And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter 
holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the 
head of that pretty insipid half Madonna-ish chit of a 
lady in that very blue summer-house." 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 



William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was the son of an English 
clergyman, and was himself educated for the ministry, 
but declined to enter it. An elder brother was a por- 
trait-painter; William tried for four years to learn the 
art, but without success. He went to London, where 
he became theatrical critic for a newspaper. Leigh Hunt, 
who was then editing the Examiner, asked him to write 
some essays for it. The result was The Round Table, a 
series of papers on books, manners, and social customs, 
written in a style of singular clearness and charm. Ste- 
venson says in one of his essays, "We are fine fellows, but 
we cannot write like Hazlitt." 

A course of lectures on literature which Hazlitt deliv- 
ered was later published in three volumes, English Comic 
Writers, English Poetry, and Dramatic Literature of the Age 
of Elizabeth. These contain some admirable literary criti- 
cism. But his chief fame rests upon his volumes of es- 
says, which include Table Talk, The Round Table, The 
Plain Speaker, Sketches and Essays, and Winterslow. Haz- 
litt was the friend of interesting people like Coleridge, 
Lamb, and Wordsworth; he was himself an interesting 
character, strong in his likes and dislikes, very apt to quar- 
rel with his friends. In this essay he shows himself as a 
true hero-worshipper. It was published in 1823, twenty- 
five years after the events which it relates. Note the fre- 
quency with which he quotes from his beloved poets; the 
ease of the style, and the vividness with which he de- 
scribes the appearance of Coleridge, and the impression 
malde by him. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

(From Winterslow, a collection of Hazlitt's essaj's 
published after his death) 

My father was a Dissenting minister, at Wem, in 
Shropshii'e; and in the year 1798 (the figures that com- 
pose the date are to me like the "dreaded name of Demo- 
gorgon" *) Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbm-y, to suc- 
ceed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian 
congregation there. He did not come till late on the 
Saturday afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. 
Rowe, who himself went down to the coach, in a state 
of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of 
his successor, could find no one at all answering the de- 
scription but a round-faced man, in a short black coat 
(like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have 
been made for him, but who seemed to be talking at a 
great rate to his fellow passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce 
returned to give an account of his disappointment when 
the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all 
doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did not 
cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I know of. 
He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful sus- 
pense for three weeks that he remained there, "flutter- 
ing the proud Salopians,] like an eagle in a dove-cote"; 
and the Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with 
their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such 
mystic sounds since the days of 

"High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay." % 

* Demogorgon, one of the fallen angels in Milton's Paradise Lost. 
t Salopians, inhabitants of Salop, an old name for Shropshire, 
i Quoted from Gray's "The Bard." 



36 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, 
and I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry 
branches, or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak- 
trees by the roadside, a sound was in my ears as of a 
Siren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep 
sleep; but I had no notion then that I should ever be 
able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery 
or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into 
my soul like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of 
the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, help- 
less, like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, life- 
less; but now, bursting the deadly bands that ''bound 
them, 

"With Styx nine times round them," * 

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their 
plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul 
has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, ob- 
scure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, 
shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never 
found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that 
my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, 
or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to 
Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose. 

My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was 
in the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and 
with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on), 
according to the custom of Dissenting ministers in each 
other's neighborhood. A line of communication is thus 
established, by which the flame of civil and religious 
liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire 
unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of JEschy- 
lus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten long 
years to announce with their blazing pyramids the de- 

* From Pope's "Ode for St. CecUia's Day." 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 37 

struction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over 
and see my father, according to the courtesy of the 
country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor; but in the 
meantime, I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday 
after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up 
into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a ro- 
mance in these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the 
primitive spirit of Christianity, which was not to be 
resisted. 

It was in January of 1798, that I rose one morning 
before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear 
this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day 

I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this 
cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 

II y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances 
peuveni effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux 
temps de ma jeunesse tie pent renaitre pour m,oi, ni s^ effacer 
jamais dans ma memoire* When I got there, the organ 
was playing the hundredth Psalm, and when it was done, 
Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, "And he went 
up into the mountain to pray, himself, alone." As he 
gave out this text, his voice "rose like a steam of rich 
distilled perfumes," f and when he came to the two last 
words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it 
seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had 
echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if 
that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through 
the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, 
"of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt 
about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey." 



* II y a, etc. "There are impressions which neither time nor cir- 
cumstances can efface. If I should live whole ages, the sweet days 
of my youth could never return to me, nor ever be effaced from my 
memory." — Rousseau's Confessions. 

t Quoted from Milton's "Comus." 



38 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

The preacher then launched into his subject, Hke an 
eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon 
peace and war; upon church and state — not their alli- 
ance but their separation — on the spirit of the world and 
the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed 
to one another. He talked of those who had "inscribed 
the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human 
gore." He made a poetical and pastoral excursion — 
and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking con- 
trast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team 
afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 
''as though he should never be old," and the same poor 
country lad, crimped,* kidnapped, brought into town, 
made drunk at an ale-house, turned into a wretched 
drummer boy, with his hair sticking on end with 
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and 
tricked out in the loathsome finery of the profession 
of blood: 

"Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung."t 

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if 
I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philos- 
ophy had met together. Truth and Genius had em- 
braced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. 
This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well 
satisfied. The sun that was still laboring pale and wan 
through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an 
emblem of the good cause; and the cold dank drops of 
dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, 
had something genial and refreshing in them; for there 
was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned 

* Crimped, entrapped in order to be forced into military or naval 
service. 

t From Pope's "Epistle to Oxford." 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 39 

everything into good. The face of nature had not then 
the brand of Jus Divinum* on it: 

"Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe."t 

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker 
came. I was called down into the room where he was, 
and went half hoping, half afraid. He received me very 
graciously, and I listened for a long time without utter- 
ing a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 
"For those two hours," he afterward was pleased to say, 
"he was conversing with William Hazlitt's forehead"! 
His appearance was different from what I had antici- 
pated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the 
dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wild- 
ness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him 
pitted with the smallpox. His complexion was at that 
time clear, and even bright — 

"As are the children of yon azure sheen." % 

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of 
ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes roll- 
ing beneath them, like a sea with darkened lustre. "A 
certain tender bloom his face o'erspread," a purple tinge 
as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the 
Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His 
mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin 
good-humored and round; but his nose, the rudder of 
the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing, 
— Uke what he has done. It might seem that the genius 
of his face as from a height surveyed and projected him 
(with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the 

* Jzis Divinum, the doctrine of the divine right of kings, i. e., that 
kings enjoyed their power by the sanction of God. 
t From Milton's "Lycidas." 
t From Thomson's "Castle of Indolence." 



40 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

world unknown of thought and imagination, with noth- 
ing to support or guide Ms veering purpose, as if Colum- 
bus had launched his adventurous course for the New 
World in a scallop, without oars or compass. So, at 
least, I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in his 
person, was rather above the common size, inclining to 
the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, "somewhat fat and 
pursy." His hair (now, alas ! gray) was then black and 
glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his 
forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthu- 
siasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is tra- 
ditionally inseparable (though of a different color) from 
the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a charac- 
ter, to all who preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge was 
at that time one of those ! 

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and 
my father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then de- 
clining into the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish 
lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent to the 
University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam 
Smith*) to prepare him for his future destination. It 
was his mother's proudest wish to see her son a Dissent- 
ing minister. So, if we look back to past generations (as 
far as eye can reach), we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, 
followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in the 
human heart; and so we may see them (if we look for- 
ward) rising up forever, and disappearing, like vaporish 
bubbles, in the human breast ! After being tossed about 
from congregation to congregation in the heats of the 
Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the Ameri- 
can war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, 
where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, 
far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about 

* Adam Smith, author of the Wealth of Nations, one of the most 
notable books on political economy. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 41 

disputed texts of Scripture, and the cause of civil and 
religious liberty. Here he passed his days, repining, 
but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal 
of the commentators — huge folios, not easily got through, 
one of which would outlast a winter ! Why did he pore 
on these from morn to night (with the exception of a 
walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather 
broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, with 
no small degree of pride and pleasure)? Here were "no 
figures nor no fantasies" — neither poetry nor philosophy 
— nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity; 
but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared within the 
pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the 
sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed 
down by the weight of the style, worn to the last fading 
thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, 
ghmmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with 
palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of 
camels at the distance of three thousand years; there 
was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the 
Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and 
the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on 
the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation ! there were 
outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of 
the riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date 
of the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the 
great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe 
were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; 
and though the soul might slumber Vvdth an hieroglyphic 
veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it wa,s 
in a slumber ill exchanged for all the sharpened realities 
of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life was 
comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity 
and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment 
to come ! 



42 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

No two individuals were ever more unlike than were 
the host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort 
of nondescript; yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian 
cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been 
more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. 
Indeed, his thoughts had wings: and as the silken sounds 
rustled round our little wainscoted parlor, my father 
threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white 
hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a smile of delight 
beamed across his rugged, cordial face, to think that 
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy ! * Besides, Cole- 
ridge seemed to take considerable notice of me, and 
that of itself was enough. 

He talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced 
over a variety of subjects. At dinner time he grew more 
animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary 
WoUstonecraftf and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he 
considered (on my father's speaking of his Vindicice Gal- 
licce as a capital performance) as a clever, scholastic man 
— a master of the topics — or, as the ready warehouseman 
of letters, who knew exactly where to lay his hand on 
what he wanted, though the goods were not his own. He 
thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter. 
Burke was a metaphysician. Mackintosh a mere logician. 
Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in 
figures, because he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, 
on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an 

*"My father was one of those who mistook his talent, after all. 
He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to 
his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally 
from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, 
indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled. (Hazhtt's 
note.) 

t Mary Wollstonecraft was the author of the Vindication of the 
Rights of Women, pubUshed in 1792. James Mackintosh's Vindicioe 
Gallicm was a defense of the French Revolution. Both books were 
regarded as very radical in their day. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 43 

eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured to say that 
I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and 
that (as far as I could find) the spealdng of him with con- 
tempt might be made the test of a vulgar, democratical 
mind. This was the first observation I ever made to Cole- 
ridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I 
remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on 
the table that day had the finest flavor imaginable. Cole- 
ridge added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgewood* (of 
whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very 
indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on 
which he remarked to them — "He strides on so far lief ore 
you, that he dwindles in the distance!" Godwin had 
once boasted to him of having carried on an argument 
with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success; 
Coleridge told him — 'Tf there had been a man of genius 
in the room he would have settled the question in five 
minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Woll- 
stonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, 
and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objec- 
tions to something she advanced with quite a playful, 
easy air. He replied, that "this was only one instance 
of the ascendancy which people of imagination exercised 
over those of mere intellect." He did not rate Godwin 
very highf (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected), 
but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wollstonecraft's powers 
of conversation; none at all of her talent for book-making. 
We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been asked if 

* Thomas Wedgewood was a famous maker of pottery. The works 
he established at Burslem grew into the Five Towns described in 
Arnold Bennett's novels. 

t He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempt- 
ing to estabUsh the future immortality of man, "without" (as he 
said) "knowing what Death was or what Life was" — and the tone 
in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a com- 
plete image of both. (Hazlitt's note.) 



44 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

he was not much struck with him, and he said, he thought 
himself in more danger of being struck hy him. I com- 
plained that he would not let me get on at all, for he re- 
quired a definition of every the commonest word, ex- 
claiming, "What do you mean by a sensation, Sir? What 
do you mean by an idea?" This, Coleridge said, was 
barricading the road to truth; it was setting up a turn- 
pike-gate at every step we took. I forget a great num- 
ber of things, many more than I remember; but the day 
passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Cole- 
ridge was to return to Shrewsbury. 

When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had 
just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedge wood, 
maldng him an offer of 150 Z. a year if he chose to waive 
his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the 
study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to 
make up his mind to close with this proposal in the 
act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional 
damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast 
quite from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by 
the shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles' 
distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congrega- 
tion at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill 
of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Moun- 
tains.* Alas ! I knew not the way thither, and felt very 
little gratitude for Mr. Wedgewood's bounty. I was 
presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge, 
asliing for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write 
something on a bit of card, advanced toward me with 
undulating step, and giving me the precious document, 
said that that was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether 
Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see 
me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would 

* Delectable Mountains, described in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 
as a place from which one may see the Celestial City. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 45 

come haJf-way to meet me. I was not less surprised than 
the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra)^ 
when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I 
stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance 
of this offer (I thought Mr. Wedgewood's annuity a trifle 
to it) as well as I could; and this mighty business being 
settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied 
him six miles on the road. 

It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he 
talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is de- 
scribed as going 

"sounding on his way." 

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in 
passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to 
float in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence 
(going along) that he should have preached two sermons 
before he accepted the situation at Shi-ewsbury, one on 
Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, show- 
ing that he could not administer either, which would have 
effectually disqualified him for the object in view. I 
observed that he continually crossed me on the way by 
shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. This 
struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that 
time connect it with any instability of purpose or invol- 
untary change of principle, as I have done since. He 
seemed unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke 
slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said 
was stolen from an objection started in one of South's 
sermons — Credat Judceus Appella ! *) I was not very 
much pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just 
been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of all 
metaphysical chokepears, his Treatise on Human Nature, 

* Credat, etc. "Let the Jew Appella believe it, I will not!" 
Quoted from Horace. 



46 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

to which the Essays in point of scholastic subtlety and 
close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer 
reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's 
general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or 
candor. He however made me amends by the manner in 
which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on 
his Essay on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reason- 
ing. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry 
with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in 
allusion to this author's theory of matter and spirit, and 
saying, "Thus I confute him. Sir." Coleridge drew a 
parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connec- 
tion) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said 
the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute 
mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. 
The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the charac- 
teristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler 
as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious 
thinker, a genuine reader of nature and his own mind. 
He did not speak of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at 
the Rolls' Chapel, of which I had never heard. Coleridge 
somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown to the 
known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy is 
a tissue of sophistry;, of wire-drawn, theological special- 
pleading; the Sermons (with the preface to them) are in a 
fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to 
our observation of human natm-e, without pedantry and 
without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few re- 
marks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that 
I had made a discovery on the same subject (the Natural 
Disinterestedness of the Human Mind) — and I tried to 
explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with 
great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself 
understood. 

I sat down to the task shortly afterward for the twenti- 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 47 

eth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make 
clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skele- 
ton style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half- 
way down the second page; and, after trying in vain to 
pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, 
facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction in 
which I had plunged myself for four or five years pre- 
ceding, gave up the attempt as labor in vain, and shed 
tears of helpless despondency on the blank, unfinished 
paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than 
I was then ? Oh no ! One truth discovered, one pang 
of regret at not being able to express it, is better than 
all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that 
I could go back to what I then was ! Why can we not 
revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had 
the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would 
write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewshury, 
and immortalize every step of it by some fond enigmat- 
ical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had 
ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to 
listen to a poet, as he passed ! I remember but one other 
topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, 
praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but 
condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time- 
serving casuist, and said that "the fact of his work on 
Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book 
in our universities was a disgi-ace to the national char- 
acter." 

We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned home- 
ward, pensive, but much pleased. I had met with unex- 
pected notice from a person whom I believed to have been 
prejudiced against me. ''Kind and affable to me had 
been his condescension, and should be honored ever with 
suitable regard." He was the first poet I had known, 
and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had 



48 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

heard a great deal of his powers of conversation and was 
not disappointed. In fact, I never met with anything 
at all like them, either before or since. I could easily 
credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding 
forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening 
or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made 
the whole material universe look like a transparency of 
fine words; and another story (which I believe he has 
somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at 
Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep 
after dinner on a sofa, where the company found him, to 
their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder 
when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, 
looked about him, and launched into a three hours' 
description of the third heaven, of which he had had a 
dream, very different from Mr. Southey's Vision of Judg- 
ment, and also from that other "Vision of Judgment,"* 
which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge-street 
Junta, took into his especial keeping. 

On my way back I had a sound in my ears — it was the 
voice of Fancy; I had a light before me — it was the face 
of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not 
quitted my side ! Coleridge, in truth, met me half-way 
on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been 
won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, 
pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. 
During those months the chill breath of winter gave 
me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration 
to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, 
lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. / 
was to visit Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance 
was never absent from my thoughts, ?.nd mingled with 

* "Vision of Judgment," by Byron. This poem, which satirized 
George the Third, was sent to Byron's publisher, Murray, who re- 
fused to print it. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 49 

all my feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, 
and received an answer postponing my intended visit 
for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to com- 
plete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but 
rather increased my ardor. In the meantime, I went to 
Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mys- 
teries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted 
with it. I had been reading Coleridge's description of 
England in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I ap- 
plied it, con amore* to the objects before me. That valley 
was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence: 
in the river that winds through it, my spirit was baptized 
in the waters of Helicon ! 

I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey 
with unworn heart, and untired feet. My way lay 
through Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, 
where I thought of Tom Jonesf and the adventure of the 
muff. I remember getting completely wet through one 
day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at Tewkes- 
bury) where I sat up all night to read Paul and Virginia.X 
Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched 
my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the 
books I read ! I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon 
this very book that nothing could show the gross indeli- 
cacy of French manners and the entire corruption of 
their imagination more strongly than the behavior of 
the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from 
a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save 
her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist 
him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a 
circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were 

* Con amore, earnestly, with love. 

t Tom Jones, the hero of the novel of that name, by Henry Field- 
ing. It was a great favorite of Hazlitt's. 

I Paul and Virginia, a novel by Bernardin St. Pierre. 



50 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he 
had borrowed the idea of his Poems on the Naming of 
Places from the local inscriptions of the same kind in 
Paul and Virginia. He did not own the obligation, and 
stated some distinction without a difference in defense 
to his claim to originality. Any, the slightest varia- 
tion, would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind; 
for whatever he added or altered would inevitably be 
worth all that any one else had done, and contain the 
marrow of the sentiment. I was still two days before the 
time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care to set out 
early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater; 
and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its 
muddy river, returned to the inn and read Camilla* So 
have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at 
pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on 
what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing 
to make me happy; but wanting that have wanted every- 
thing ! 

I arrived, and was well received. The country about 
Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the 
seashore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval 
of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was 
the map of my life spread out before me, as the map of 
the country lay at my feet ! In the afternoon, Coleridge 
took me over to Alfoxden, a romantic old family mansion 
of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It was then 
in the' possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave him 
the free use of it. Somehow, that period (the time just 
after the French Revolution) was not a time when noth- 
ing was given for nothing. The mind opened and a soft- 
ness might be perceived coming over the heart of individ- 
uals, beneath "the scales that fence" our self-interest. 

* Camilla, a novel by Madame D'Arblay, better known as Fannj' 
Burney. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 51 

Wordsworth himself was from home, but his sister kept 
house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free 
access to her brother's poems, the Lyrical Ballads, which 
were still in manuscript, or in the form of SybilUne Leaves. 
I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and 
with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old 
room with blue hangings, and covered with the round- 
faced family portraits of the age of George I. and II., 
and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park 
that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could 

"hear the loud stag speak." 



In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I 
felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a 
state between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct 
but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is 
always something to come better than what v/e see. As 
in oiu* dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and 
reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas 
are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good spirits; 
we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight 
of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, 
and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. 
As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and 
of hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamb's-wool, 
lulled in Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, 
their spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left 
but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been! 

That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we 
strolled out into the park, and seating ourselves on the 
trunk of an old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, 
Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and musical voice, 
the ballad of "Betty Foy."* I was not critically or 

* "Betty Foy " and the other poems here mentioned are by Words- 
worth. 



62 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, 
and took the rest for granted. But in the "Thorn," the 
"Mad Mother," and the "Complaint of a Poor Indian 
Woman," I felt that deeper power and pathos which have 
been since acknowledged, 

"In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,"* 

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a 
new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It 
had to me something of the effect that arises from the 
turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath 
of Spring: 

"While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." f 

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that eve- 
ning, and his voice sounded high 

"Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," % 

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or 
waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight! He la- 
mented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to be- 
lieve in the traditional superstitions of the place, and 
that there was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fad- 
ness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in 
his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit 
that descended to him through the air; it sprung out of 
the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green 
spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however 
(if I remember right), that this objection must be con- 
fined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry 
had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his 

* From Pope's Essay on Man. f From Thomson's Seasons. 

X From Milton's Paradise Lost. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 53 

soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to 
discover truth bj'^ intuition, rather than by deduction. 
The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at 
Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He an- 
swered in some degree to his friend's description of liim, 
but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was 
quaintty dressed (according to the costume of that un- 
constrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped 
pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in 
his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a 
severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a 
fire in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more 
than the outward appearance), an intense, high, narrow 
forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong 
purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to 
laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with 
the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face. 
Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits; but he was 
teased into making it regular and heavy: Hay don's 
head of him, introduced into the Entrance of Christ into 
Jerusalem, is the most like his drooping weight of thought 
and expression. He sat down and talked very naturally 
and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing accents in 
his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tinc- 
ture of the northern hiirr, like the crust on wine. He 
instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire 
cheese on the table, and said, triumphantly, that "his 
marriage with experience had not been so productive as 
Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good 
things of this life." He had been to see the Castle Specter 
by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very 
well. He said ''it fitted the taste of the audience like a 
glove." This ad captandum * merit was however by no 
means a recommendation of it, according to the severe 
* Ad captandum, to catch the crowd. 



54 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

principles of the new school, which reject rather than 
court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the 
low, latticed window, said, "How beautifully the sun 
sets on that yellow bank!" I thought within myself, 
"With what eyes these poets see nature !" and ever after, 
when I saw the sunset stream upon the objects facing it, 
conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Words- 
worth for having made one for me ! 

We went over to Alfoxden again the day following, 
and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the 
open air; and the comment upon it by his face and voice 
was very different from that of some later critics ! What- 
ever might be thought of the poem, "his face was as a 
book where men might read strange matters," * and he 
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There 
is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Words- 
worth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms 
the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves 
by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompani- 
ment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and 
varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and in- 
ternal. The one might be termed more dramatic, the 
other more lyrical. Coleridge has told me that he him- 
self liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or 
breaking through the straggling branches of a copse 
wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) 
walkjng up and down a straight gravel walk, or in some 
spot where the continuity of his verse met with no col- 
lateral interruption. Returning that same evening, I 
got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, 
while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the 
nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us suc- 
ceeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligi- 
ble. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and 
* From Macbeth, I, v, 63. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 55 

in the neighborhood, generally devoting the afternoons to 
a delightful chat in an arbor made of bark by the poet's 
friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and 
listening to the bees humming round us while we quaffed 
our flip. 

It was agreed, among other things, that we should 
make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. 
We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and 
I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one of 
those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as 
flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound 
of a brass pan. He ''followed in the chase like a dog who 
hunts, not like one that made up the cry." * He had on 
a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low 
in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a 
drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a 
sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running foot- 
man by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or 
sound that fell from Coleridge's lips. He told me his 
private opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He 
scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an opinion the 
whole way: j^et of the three, had I to choose during that 
journey, I would be John Chester. He afterward fol- 
lowed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean 
philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any 
of their categories. When he sat down at table with his 
idol, John's felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or 
Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat down at the same table 
with the king, was not more so. We passed Dunster on 
our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the 
sea. I remember eying it wistfully as it lay below us: 
contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as 
clear, as pure, as embrowned and ideal as any landscape I 
have seen since, of Caspar Poussin's or Domenichino's. 
* From Othello, II, iii, 370. 



56 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

We had a long day's march (our feet kept time to the 
echoes of Coleridge's tongue) through Minehead and by 
the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not 
reach till near midnight, and where we had some diffi- 
culty in making a lodgment. We, however, knocked the 
people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our 
apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of 
fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had 
been splendid. We walked for miles and miles on dark 
brown heaths overlooking the Channel, with the Welsh 
hiUs beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered 
vaUeys close by the seaside, with a smuggler's face scowl- 
ing by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a 
path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like 
a monk's shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out 
to Coleridge's notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very 
edge of the horizon, and within the red-orbed disk of the 
setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the Ancient 
Manner. 

At Linton the character of the seacoast becomes more 
marked and rugged. There is a place called the Valley 
of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for 
it), bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with 
rocky caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and 
where the sea-gull forever wheels its screaming flight. 
On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, 
as jf an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind 
these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like 
the Giant's Causeway. A thunder-storm came on while 
we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out bare- 
headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the 
Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds only mut- 
tered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refresliing 
drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were 
to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, wliich 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 57 

was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, 
the Death of Abel, but they had rehnquished the design. 
In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuri- 
ously in an old-fashioned parlor on tea, toast, eggs, and 
honey, in the very sight of the beehives from which it 
had been taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild 
flowers that had produced it. 

On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's Georgics, 
but not well. I do not think he had much feeling for 
the classical or elegant.* It was in this room that we 
found a little worn-out copy of the Seasons, lying in a 
window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, "That is 
true fame!" He said Thomson was a great poet, rather 
than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his 
thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best 
modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads were an ex- 
periment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, 
to see how far the public taste would endm-e poetry written 
in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been 
attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical 
diction, and making use only of such words as had prob- 
ably been common in the most ordinary language since 
the days of Henry II. Some comparison was introduced 
between Shakespeare and Milton. He said "he hardly 
knew which to prefer. Shakespeare appeared to him a 
mere stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, 
with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never 
appeared to have come to man's estate; or if he had, he 

* He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this 
time I had as Uttle as he. He sometimes gives a striking account 
at present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others; of one 
in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, 
and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, 
while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deUverer. 
He would, of course, understand so broad and fine a moral as this 
at any time. (Hazlitt's note.) 



58 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

would not have been a man, but a monster." He spoke 
with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. 
He did not like the versification of the latter. He ob- 
served that "the ears of these couplet writers might be 
charged with having short memories, that could not re- 
tain the harmony of whole passages." He thought little 
of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; 
and a much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and 
poHtician, than of Fox or Pitt. He, however, thought 
him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some 
of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. 
He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get 
him to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams* In short, 
he was profound and discriminating with respect to those 
authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment 
fair play; capricious, preverse, and prejudiced in his 
antipathies and distastes. 

We loitered on the "ribbed sea sands," in such talk as 
this a whole morning, and, I recollect, met with a curi- 
ous seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country 
name ! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy 
that had been drowned the day before, and that they had 
tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said 
"he did not know how it was that thej^ ventured, but. 
Sir, we have a nature toward one another." This expres- 
sion, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of 
that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with 
Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an argument of 
mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of 
ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind 
of a man's foot, not because it was part of a former im- 
pression of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but be- 
cause it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented 
to the justness of this distinction (which I have explained 

* Caleb Williams, a political novel by Godwin, famous in its day. 



WILLIAM HAZLITT 59 

at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) and 
John Chester listened; not from any interest in the sub- 
ject, but because he was astonished that I should be able 
to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already 
know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge 
remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valleys 
where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights 
gleaming through the dark. 

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set 
out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It 
was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day 
for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had pre- 
pared anything for the occasion? He said he had not 
even thought of the text, but should as soon as we parted. 
I did not go to hear him — this was a fault — but we met 
in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a 
long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a 
well side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our 
thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive 
lines of his tragedy of Remorse ; which I must say became 
his mouth and that occasion better than they, some years 
after, did Mr. ElHston's and the Drury-lane * boards — 

"Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 

I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which 
period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in 
Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, un- 
like his setting out. It was not till some time after that 
I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always 
appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace 
book under his arm, and the first with a hon mot in his 
mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Hol- 
croft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely 

* Di-ury Lane, a famous London theatre. EUiston acted there. 



60 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

which was the best — Man as he was, or man as he is to he. 
"Give me," says Lamb, "man as he is not to be." This 
saying was the beginning of a friendship between us which 
I believe still continues. Enough of this for the present. 

"But there is matter for another rime. 
And I to this may add a second tale." 



LEIGH HUNT 

ON GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS 



Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was a London boy; he received 
his early education in the Christ's Hospital School, as 
did Charles Lamb. He very early began to write verse, 
which his father published under the title, A Collection of 
Poems Written between the Ages of Twelve and Sixteen. 
In 1808 Leigh and his brother John started a newspaper 
called the Examiner. For certain articles in this criti- 
cising the Prince Regent, the editors were prosecuted 
and imprisoned for two years. Here they continued 
their writing and entertained their friends; Thomas 
Moore, Byron, and John Keats came to see them. After 
Hunt's release he continued his literary work, writing 
criticism, book reviews, essays, plays, and poems. In 1822 
he went to Italy to edit The Liberal, at a safe distance 
from England. Charles Dickens in Bleak House carica- 
tured Hunt as Harold Skimpole, magnifying some of his 
weaknesses. Hunt's best-known works are his Autobi- 
ography, an interesting book, and the volumes of essays 
entitled, Men, Women, and Books and Table Talk. While 
he does not rank among the greater English essayists, his 
writing has a freedom and spontaneity that make it very 
pleasant reading. 



LEIGH HUNT 

ON GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS 

(From the Examiner) 

An Italian author — Giulio Cordara, a Jesuit — has 
written a poem upon insects, which he begins by insist- 
ing, that those troublesome and abominable little animals 
were created for our annoyance, and that they were cer- 
tainly not inhabitants of Paradise. We of the north may 
dispute this piece of theology; but on the other hand, it 
is as clear as the snow on the housetops, that Adam was 
not under the necessity of shaving; and that when Eve 
walked out of her delicious bower, she did not step upon 
ice three inches thick. 

Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a 
cold morning. You have only, they tell you, to take the 
resolution; and the thing is done. This may be very true; 
just as a boy at school has only to take a flogging, and 
the thing is over. But we have not at all made up our 
minds upon it; and we find it a very pleasant exercise to 
discuss the matter, candidly, before we get up. This, 
at least, is not idling, though it may be lying. It affords 
an excellent answer to those who ask how lying in bed can 
be indulged in by a reasoning being, — a rational crea- 
ture. How? Why, with the argument calmly at work 
in one's head, and the clothes over one's shoulder. Oh — 
it is a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. 

If these people would be more charitable they would 
get on with their argument better. But they are apt 
to reason so ill, and to assert so dogmatically, that one 
could wish to have them stand round one's bed, of a 

63 



64 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

bitter morning, and lie before their faces. They ought 
to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and out. If 
they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts 
for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can. 
Candid inquiries into one's decumbency, besides the 
greater or less privileges to be allowed a man in propor- 
tion to his ability of keeping early hours, the work given 
his faculties, etc., will at least concede their due merits 
to such representations as the following. In the first 
place, says the injured but calm appealer, I have been 
warm all night, and find my system in a state perfectly 
suitable to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this 
state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and un- 
critical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to 
such a creature, that the poets, refining upon the tor- 
tures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies 
consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold, — 
from fire to ice. They are "haled" out of their "beds," 
says Milton, by "harpy-footed furies," — fellows who 
come to call them. On my first movement toward the 
anticipation of getting up I find that such parts of the 
sheets and bolster as are exposed to the air of the room 
are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that 
meets them is my own breath rolling forth, as if in the 
open air, like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this 
symptom. Then I turn my eyes sidewaj^s and see the 
window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the ser- 
vant comes in. "It is very cold this morning, is it 
not?"— "Very cold, sir."— "Very cold indeed, isn't it?" 
— "Very cold indeed, sir." — "More than usually so, 
isn't it, even for this weather?" (Here the servant's 
wit and good nature are put to a considerable test, and 
the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) "Why, 
sir ... I think it is." (Good creature ! There is not 
a better or more truth-teUing servant going.) "I must 



LEIGH HUNT 65 

rise, however — get me some warm water." — Here comes 
a fine interval between the departm-e of the servant and 
the arrival of the hot water; during which, of com-se, it is 
of "no use" to get up. The hot water comes. "Is it 
quite hot?" — "Yes, sir." — "Perhaps too hot for shaving; 
I must wait a little ? " — " No, sir; it will just do." (There 
is an overnice propriety sometimes, an officious zeal of 
virtue, a little troublesome.) "Oh — the shirt — you must 
air my clean shirt; — linen gets very damp this weather." 
— "Yes, sir." Here another delicious five minutes. A 
knock at the door. "Oh, the shirt — very well. My 
stockings — I think the stockings had better be aired too." 
— "Very well, sir." Here another interval. At length 
everything is ready, except myself. 

I now, continues our incumbent (a happy word, by 
the by, for a country vicar) — I now cannot help thinking 
a good deal — who can? — upon the unnecessary and vil- 
lainous custom of shaving: it is a thing so umiianly (here 
I nestle closer) — so effeminate (here I recoil from an un- 
lucky step into the colder part of the bed). — No wonder 
that the Queen of France took part with the rebels against 
that degenerate king, her husband, who first affronted 
her smooth visage with a face like her own. The Em- 
peror Julian never showed the luxm-iancy of his genius 
to better advantage than in reviving the flowing beard. 
Look at Cardinal Bembo's picture — at Michael Angelo's 
— at Titian's — at Shakespeare's — at Fletcher's — at Spen- 
ser's — at Chaucer's — at Alfred's — at Plato's — I could 
name a great man for every tick of my watch. — Look at 
the Turks, a grave and otiose people. — Think of Haroun 
Al Raschid and Bed-ridden Hassan. — Think of Wortley 
Montague, the worthy son of his mother, above the preju- 
dice of his time. — Look at the Persian gentlemen, whom 
one is ashamed of meeting about the subm-bs, their dress 
and appearance are so much finer than our own. — Lastly, 



66 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

think of the razor itself — how totally opposed to every 
sensation of bed — how cold, how edgy, how hard ! how 
utterly different from anything like the warm and circling 
amplitude, which 

Sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses.* 

Add to this, benumbed fingers, which may help you to 
cut yourself, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a ewer 
full of ice; and he that says there is nothing to oppose 
in all this, only shows that he has no merit in opposing 
it. 

Thomson the poet, who exclaims in his Seasons — 

Falsely luxurious ! Will not man awake ? 

used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no 
motive in getting up. He could imagine the good of 
rising; but then he could also imagine the good of lying 
still; and his exclamation, it must be allowed, was made 
upon summer-time, not winter. We must proportion 
the argument to the individual character. A money- 
getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or four pence; 
but this will not suffice for a student. A proud man may 
say, "What shall I think of myself, if I don't get up?" 
but the more humble one will be content to waive this 
prodigious notion of himself, out of respect to his kindly 
bed. The mechanical man shall get up without any ado 
at all; and so shall the barometer. An ingenious lier in 
bed will find hard matter of discussion even on the score 
of health and longevity. He will ask us for our proofs 
and precedents of the ill effects of lying later in cold 
weather; and sophisticate much on the advantages of an 
even temperature of body; of the natural propensity 
(pretty universal) to have one's way; and of the animals 

* From Macbeth, I, vi, 3. 



LEIGH HUNT 67 

that roU themselves up and sleep all the winter. As to 
longevity, he will ask whether the longest is of necessity 
the best; and whether Holborn is the handsomest street 
m London. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

ON A LAZY IDLE BOY 



William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) one of the 
leading writers of the Victorian age, was born in Calcutta; 
at six he was sent to England to be educated. He entered 
the Charterhouse school in London, a place that appears 
as Grejrfriars in his novel Pendennis. He attended Trin- 
ity College, Cambridge, but did not graduate. He spent 
some years abroad, partly in rambling over Europe, partly 
in studying art in Paris. His ability in this direction 
was shown later in the illustrations he made for his own 
books. He learned German at Weimar; the essay On a 
Lazy Idle Boy, contains a reminiscence of this period. 
On his retiu-n to England he became a contributor to vari- 
ous magazines, writing sketches of Paris and Irish life. 
His first novel. The Great Hoggarty Diamond, appeared 
in 1841, but it was not until the publication of Vanity 
Fair (1847) that he became famous as a novelist. He de- 
livered a course of lectures on English history; his success 
in this field led him to make lecture tours to America in 
1852 and 1855. His lectures were later published in two 
volumes, English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century and 
The Four Georges. He was the first editor of the Corn- 
hill Magazine, and contributed to it a series of essays en- 
titled The Roundabout Papers. These reveal the person- 
ality of a man whom Thomas Carlyle — a man not given 
to sentiment — always called ''dear old Thackeray." Easy 
in style, yet never undignified; worldly-wise, yet not 
cynical; shrewd, but not sarcastic, the essays are the 
best talk of one of the best of gentlemen. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

ON A LAZY IDLE BOY 

(From the Roundabout Papers) 

I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the 
little old town of Coire or Chur, in the Orisons,* where 
lies buried that very ancient British king, saint, and 
martyr, Lucius,t who founded the Church of St. Peter, 
on Cornhill. Few people note the church nowadays, and 
fewer ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, 
his statue appears surrounded by other sainted persons 
of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, 
a curly brown beard, and a neat httle gilt crown and 
sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: 
and from what I may call his peculiar position with re- 
gard to Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St. Lucius with 
more interest than I should have bestowed upon person- 
ages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his superiors. 

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end 
of the world — of the world of to-day, the world of rapid 
motion, and rushing railways, and the commerce and 
intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the iron 
road stretches away to Ziirich, to Basle, to Paris, to 
home. From the old southern barriers, before which a 

* Grisons, a canton of Switzerland. Chur is the capital. 

t Stow quotes the inscription still extant "from the table fast 
chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill"; and says, "he was after 
some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried 
at Glowcester" — but, oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban 
Butler, in the Lives of the Saints, v. 12, and Murray's Handbook, 
and the sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I 
saw his tomb with my own eyes. (Thackeray's note.) 

71 



72 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

little river rushes, and around which stretch the crumbling 
battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the slow 
diligence or lagging vetturino * by the shallow Rhine, 
through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently 
over the Spliigen to the shores of Como. 

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, 
and pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need 
have the inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to 
build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to 
dry on them ? No enemies approach the great mouldering 
gates: only at morn and even the cows come lowing past 
them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the 
fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream that 
flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book 
and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gym- 
nasium,! and return thence at their stated time. There 
is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentle- 
man goes to it. There are shops with no customers 
seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little 
windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is 
a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, 
and a pretty brisk trade with half-a-dozen urchins stand- 
ing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce any talk or 
movement in the street. There's nobody at the book- 
shop. "If you will have the goodness to come again in 
an hour," says the banker, with his mouth full of dinner 
at, one o'clock, "you can have the money." There is 
nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind 
waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. No- 
body is in the Protestant church — (Oh ! strange sight, the 
two confessions are here at peace !) — nobody in the Catho- 
lic church : until the sacristan, from his snug abode in the 
cathedral close, espies the traveller eying the monsters 

* Vetturino, a four-wheeled carriage. 

t Gymnasium, a school which prepares for the university. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 73 

and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his cathe- 
dral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possi- 
bly) and opens the gate, and shows you the venerable 
chiu*ch, and the queer old relics in the sacristy, and the 
ancient vestments (a black velvet cope, amongst other 
robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that no- 
torious "pervert," Henry of Navarre and France), and 
the statue of St. Lucius who built St. Peter's Church, 
on Cornhill. 

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town ! 
Has it been asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, 
and is the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal Realms in 
his screaming car drawn by his snorting steel elephant 
coming to waken it? Time was when there must have 
been life and bustle and commerce here. Those vast, 
venerable walls were not made to keep out cows, but 
men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who prowled about 
the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed in and 
out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and 
their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of 
the different denominations can't quarrel? Why, seven 
or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen hundred years ago (they 
haven't the register of St. Peter's up to that remote period. 
I dare say it was burned in the fire of London) — a dozen 
hundred years ago, when there was some life in the town, 
St. Lucius was stoned here on account of theological dif- 
ferences, after founding our church in Cornhill. 

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take 
in the evening and mark the mountains round glooming 
with a deeper purple; the shades creeping up the golden 
walls; the river brawling, the cattle calling, the maids 
and chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and bawl- 
ing; and several times in the course of our sober walks 
we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or hobbledehoy, with a 
rusty coat, and trousers not too long, and big feet trailing 



74 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

lazily one after the other, and large lazy hands dawdling 
from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands a little 
book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I dare 
say so charmed and ravished him, that he was blind to the 
beautiful sights around him; unmindful, I would venture 
to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to learn for to- 
morrow; forgetful of mother waiting supper, and father 
preparing a scolding; — absorbed utterly and entirely in 
his book. 

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as 
he stood by the river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum,.* 
What book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the 
rest of the world, so that he did not care to see the apple- 
woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of 
Eve) the pretty girls with their apple-cheeks, who laughed 
and prattled round the fountain ! What was the book ? 
Do you suppose it was Livy, or the Greek grammar? 
No; it was a Novel that you were reading, you lazy, not 
very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy ! It was 
D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or almost 
succeeding in keeping Charles the First's head on. It was 
the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf cutting himself out of 
the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I 
like best myself — novels without love or talking, or any 
of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fight- 
ing, escaping, robbery, and rescuing) — cutting himself 
out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte 
Crfsto. O Dumas ! O thou brave, kind, gallant old 
Alexandre ! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee 
thanks for many pleasant hours. I have read thee 
(being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, 

* Pons Asinorum, literally "bridge of asses," an old name for the 
proposition in geometry which sets forth that if a triangle has two 
sides of equal length the angles opposite those sides are also equal. 
This is the first difficult proposition in geometry, hence its name. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 75 

and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. 
Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will 
go so far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, 
or insert the name of his favorite author) ; and as for the 
anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his schoolmaster, 
or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender plead- 
ings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow 
cold — I don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No ! 
figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter. 

Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white- 
robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at 
the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story- 
teller reciting his marvels out of Antar or the Arabian 
Nights f I was once present when a young gentleman at 
the table put a tart away from him, and said to his neigh- 
bor, the Younger Son (with rather a fatuous air): "I 
never eat sweets." 

"Not eat sweets! and do you know why?" says T. 

"Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young 
gentleman. 

"Because you are a glutton and a sot !" cries the Elder 
(and Juvenis winces a little). "All people who have 
natural, healthy appetites, love sweets; all children, all 
women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrupted 
by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful of rasp- 
berries and cream disappeared before the philosopher. 

You take the allegoiy ? Novels are sweets. All people 
with healthy literary appetites love them — almost all 
women; — a vast number of clever, hardhead ed men. 
Why, one of the most learned physicians in England said 
to me only yesterday, "I have just read So-and-So for 
the second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite fic- 
tions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are 
notorious novel-readers; as well as young boys and sweet 
girls, and their kind tender mothers. Who has not read 



76 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night 
when he was not at whist? 

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether 
he will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He 
is taking too great a glut of them now. He is eating jelly 
until he will be sick. He will know most plots by the 
time he is twenty, so that he will never be surprised when 
the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl, — when the 
old Waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows 
his stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasp- 
ing Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, 
her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelist's 
same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps 
and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. 
He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools 
grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some little 
time myself, and the practice may have ended too) — 
as private schoolboys used to grow tired of the pudding 
before their mutton at dinner. 

And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The 
moral I take to be this: the appetite for novels extend- 
ing to the end of the world; far away in the frozen deep, 
the sailors reading them to one another during the end- 
less night; — far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn 
sheiks and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his 
tales; far away in the Indian camps, where the soldiers 

listen to 's tales, or 's, after the hot day's march; 

far away in little Chur yonder where the lazy boy pores 
over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes: — 
the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must 
supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bom- 
bay or Calcutta. 

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, 
it will disagree with him; and so surely, dear youth, will 
too much novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel- 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 77 

writers themselves read many novels? If you go into 
Gunter's you don't see those charming young ladies (to 
whom I present my most respectful compliments) eating 
tarts and ices, but at the proper eventide they have good 
plain wholesome tea and bread and butter. Can any- 
body tell me does the author of the Tale of Two Cities 
read novels ? does the author of the Tower of London de- 
vour romances? does the dashing Harry Lorrequer de- 
light in Plain or Ringlets or Spunge's Sporting Tourf 
Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the 
books which delighted our young days, Darnley, and 
Richelieu, and Delorme* relish the works of Alexandre 
the Great, and thrill over the Three Musqueteersf Does 
the accomplished author of The Caxtons read the other 
tales in Blackwood f (For example, that ghost-story 
printed last August, and which for my part, though I 
read it in the public reading-room at the "Pavilion Ho- 
tel" at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I 
scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does Uncle Tom 
admire Adam Bede; and does the author of the Vicar 
of Wrexhill laugh over The Warden and the Three Clerks ? 
Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous 
pudor ! t I make no doubt that the eminent parties above 
named aU partake of novels in moderation — eat jellies — 
but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast 
and boiled. 

Here, dear youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine 
owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction; 
and though it does not become them to brag of their 

* By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the veteran 
novelist ! He was appointed her Majesty's Consul-General in 
Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous "Two Cavahers" 
cannot by any possibility be seen riding together. (Thackeray's 
note.) The reference is to G. P. R. James, whose romantic novels 
usually opened with a description of two cavahers riding together. 

t Pudor (Lat.), shyness, modesty. 



78 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where thou 
shalt sit in good company.* That story of the Fox f was 
written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor 
Franklin under the awful Ai'ctic Night: that account of 
China t is told by the man of all the empire most Hkely 
to know of what he speaks: those pages regarding Volun- 
teers § come from an honored hand that has borne the 
sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British 
guns in the greatest siege in the world. 

Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, 
and shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. 
In the Atlantic steamers, on the first day out (and on 
high and holy days subsequently), the jellies set down on 
table are richly ornamented; medioque in fonte leporum \\ 
rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned in 
tin. As the passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, 
the Captain no doubt improves the occasion by expressing 
a hope, to his right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull 
and his younger Brother may always float side by side 
in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously 
compared to jellies — here are two (one perhaps not en- 
tirely saccharine, and flavored with an amari aliquid^ 
very distasteful to some palates) — two novels** under two 
flags, the one that ancient ensign which has hung before 



* This essay appeared in the first issue of the Cornhill Magazine, 
of which Thackeray was editor. In the following sentences he men- 
tions the chief articles in that number of the magazine. 

t The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private Journal 
of an Officer of the Fox.) 

t The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians. By Sir John Bowring. 

§ Our Volunteers. By Sir John Burgoyne. 

I! In the midst of this abundance of attractive things. 

IF Amari aliquid, something bitter, referring to the occasional 
satire in Thackeray's novels. 

** In this issue of the Cornhill appeared the opening chapters of 
Thackeray's Lovel the Widower and of Anthony TroUope's Framley 
Parsonage. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 79 

the well-known booth of Vanity Fair; the other that fresh 
and handsome standard which has lately been hoisted 
on Barchester Towers. Pray, sir, or madam, to which 
dish will you be helped? 

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain 
Comstock press their guests to partake of the fare on 
that memorable "First day out," when there is no man, 
I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his voyage, 
and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away 
into the blue water. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 



Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), one of the best- 
known English novelists, was born in Edinburgh. His 
father was a builder of lighthouses and wished his son 
to follow his profession, but the boy's health forbade 
this. He attended Edinburgh University, where he was 
not a very diligent student but a tremendous reader. He 
began the study of law, although his heart was not in it; 
as he tells us in this essay, he desired of all things to be- 
come a writer. In this he was handicapped by his poor 
health; an inherited tendency to consumption made him 
an invalid practically all his life. In search of health he 
went to the south of France, to Switzerland, to the Adiron- 
dacks, and finally to the South Sea islands, where he died 
in 1894. 

The beginning of his literary work is told in this essay. 
He made a canoe trip thi-ough Holland and Belgium, 
and described it in ^n Inland Voyage; a walking tour in 
France gave material for Travels with a Donkey. Then 
followed two volumes of essays, Virginibus Puerisque 
(To Girls and Boys), and Familiar Studies of Men and 
Books. His first novel. Treasure Island, published in 
1883, made him famous. It has taken its place beside 
Robinson Crusoe as one of the best boys' books ever written. 
Other novels of his are Kidnapped, David Balfour, The 
Master of Ballantrae, and The Weir of Hermiston. He 
wrote a number of notable short stories, of which the 
best known is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ; also a volume of 
poems, A Child's Garden of Verses. 

In his essays Stevenson shows himself one of the great 
masters of style. Clear, flexible, musical, it is a perfect 
medium for conveying his thought. How he acquired 
this style is told in the paper A College Magazine. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 

(From Memories and Portraits) 
I 

All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and 
pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was 
always busy on my own private end, which was to learn 
to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to 
read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy 
fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat 
by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a 
penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down 
the features of the scene or commemorate some halting 
stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus 
wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously 
for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an 
author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed 
that I would learn to write. That was a proficiency 
that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men 
learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description 
was the principal field of my exercise; for to any one 
with senses there is always something worth describing, 
and town and country are but one continuous subject. 
But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied 
my wsJks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played 
many parts; and often exercised myself in writing down 
conversations from memory. 

This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries 
I sometimes tried to keep, but always and very speedily 

83 



84 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

discarded, finding them a school of posturing and melan- 
choly self-deception. And yet this was not the most 
efficient part of my training. Good though it was, it 
only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) 
the lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the 
choice of the essential note and the right word: things 
that to a happier constitution had perhaps come by na- 
ture. And regarded as training, it had one grave de- 
fect; for it set me no standard of achievement. So that 
there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly 
more effort, in my secret labors at home. Whenever I 
read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, 
in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with 
propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous 
force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit 
down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was 
unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was 
again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least 
in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in 
harmony, in construction, and in the co-ordination of 
parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, 
to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to 
Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and 
to Obermann. I remember one of these monkey tricks, 
which was called The Vanity of Morals : it was to have 
had a second part. The Vanity of Knowledge; and as I 
had neither morality nor scholarship, the names wero 
apt; but the second part was never attempted, and the 
first part was written (which is my reason for recalling 
it, ghostlike, from its ashes) no less than three times: 
first in the manner of Haiilitt, second in the manner of 
Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, and third, 
in a laborious pasticcio * of Sir Thomas Browne. So with 

* Pasticcio, a term used in painting to denote a picture painted in 
direct imitation of the style of another artist. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 85 

my other works : Cain, an epic, was (save the mark !) 
an imitation of Sordello ; Robin Hood, a tale in verse, 
took an eclectic middle com-se among the fields of Keats, 
Chaucer, and Morris; in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined 
on the bosom of Mr. Swinbm-ne; in my innumerable 
gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the 
first draft of The King's Pardon, a tragedy, I was on the 
trail of no lesser man than John Webster; in the second 
draft of the same piece, with staggering versatility, I 
had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and of course 
conceived my fable in a less serious vein — for it was not 
Congreve's verse, it was his exquisite prose, that I ad- 
mired and sought to copy. Even at the age of thirteen 
I had tried to do justice to the inhabitants of the famous 
city of Peebles in the style of the Book of Snobs. So I 
might go on forever, through all my abortive novels, and 
down to my later plays, of which I think more tenderly, 
for they were not only conceived at first under the brac- 
ing influence of old Dumas, but have met with resurrec- 
tions: one, strangely bettered by another hand, came on 
the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; the other, 
originally known as Semiramis: a Tragedy, I have ob- 
served on book-stalls under the alias of Prince Otto. But 
enough has been said to show by what arts of impersona- 
tion, and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw 
my words on paper. 

That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether 
I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats 
learned, and there was never a finer temperament for 
literature than Keats's; it was so, if we could trace it 
out, that all men have learned; and that is why a revival 
of letters is always accompanied or heralded by a cast 
back to earlier and fresher models. Perhaps I hear some 
one cry out: But this is not the way to be original ! It is 
not; nor is there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, 



86 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

if you are born original, is there anything in this training 
that shall clip the wings of your originality. There can 
be none more original than Montaigne, neither could 
any be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to 
see how much the one must have tried in his time to imi- 
tate the other. Burns is the very type of a prime force 
in letters: he was of all men the most imitative. Shake- 
speare himself, the imperial, proceeds directly from a 
school. It is only from a school that we can expect to 
have good writers; it is almost invariably from a school 
that great writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. Nor 
is there anything here that should astonish the consider- 
ate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, 
the student should have tried all that are possible; before 
he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he 
should long have practised the literary scales; and it is 
only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down 
at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of 
turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, 
and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within 
the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it. 

And it is the great point of these imitations that there 
still shines beyond the student's reach his inimitable 
model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of fail- 
lu-e; and it is a very old and a very true saying that 
failure is the only highroad to success. I must have 
had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly con- 
dem'Hed my own performances. I liked doing them in- 
deed; but when they were done, I could see they were 
rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them 
even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be 
my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the 
friendliness to be quite plain with me. "Padding," said 
one. Another wrote: "I cannot understand why you 
do lyrics so badly." No more could I ! Thrice I put 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 87 

myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by 
sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned; 
and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they had 
not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected 
was the case, there was no good in repeating the experi- 
ment; if they had been looked at — well, then I had not 
yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and 
living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune, which is 
the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to 
see my literature in print, and to measure experimentally 
how far I stood from the favor of the public. 

II 

The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, 
and has counted among its members Scott, Brougham, 
Jeffrey, Horner, Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, 
and many a legal and local celebrity besides. By an 
accident, variously explained, it has its rooms in the very 
buildings of the University of Edinburgh: a hall, Turkey- 
carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up 
at night with fire and candle, like some goodly dining- 
room; a passage-like library, walled with books in their 
wire cages; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a 
table, many prints of famous members, and a mural 
tablet to the virtues of a former secretary. Here a mem- 
ber can warm himself and loaf and read; here, in defiance 
of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks 
askance at these privileges; looks even with a somewhat 
vinegar aspect on the whole society; which argues a lack 
of proportion in the learned mind, for the world, we may 
be sure, will prize far higher this haunt of dead lions than 
all the living dogs of the professorate. 

I sat one December morning in the library of the Spec- 
ulative; a very humble-minded youth, though it was a 



88 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

virtue I never had much credit for; yet proud of my 
privileges as a member of the Spec; proud of the pipe 
I was smoking in the teeth of the Senatus; and in par- 
ticular, proud of being in the next room to three very 
distinguished students, who were then conversing beside 
the corridor fire. One of these has now his name on 
the back of several volumes, and his voice, I learn, is 
influential in the law courts. Of the death of the sec- 
ond, you have just been reading what I had to say.* And 
the third also has escaped out of that battle of life in 
which he fought so hard, it may be so unwisely. They 
were all three, as I have said, notable students; but this 
was the most conspicuous. Wealthy, handsome, ambi- 
tious, adventurous, diplomatic, a reader of Balzac, and 
of all men that I have known, the most like to one of 
Balzac's characters, he led a life, and was attended by 
an ill fortune, that could be properly set forth only in 
the Comedie Humaine. He had then his eye on Parlia- 
ment; and soon after the time of which I write, he made a 
showy speech at a political dinner, was cried up to heaven 
next day in the Courant, and the day after was dashed 
lower than earth with a charge of plagiarism in the Scots- 
man. Report would have it (I dare say, very wrongly) 
that he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly 
trusted, and that the author of the charge had learned 
its truth from his own lips. Thus, at least, he was up 
one day on a pinnacle, admired and envied by all ; and the 
next, though still but a boy, he was publicly disgraced. 
The blow would have broken a less finely tempered spirit; 
and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took 
flight to London, and there, in a fast club, disposed of 
the bulk of his considerable patrimony in the space of 
one winter. For years thereafter he lived I know not 

*The reference is to the essay "Old MortaKty," which precedes 
this essay in the volume Memories and Portraits. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 89 

how; always well dressed, always in good hotels and good 
society, always with empty pockets. The charm of his 
manner may have stood him in good stead; but though 
my own manners are very agreeable, I have never found 
in them a source of livelihood; and to explain the miracle 
of his continued existence, I must fall back upon the 
theorj^ of the philosopher, that in his case, as in all of the 
same kind, "there was a suffering relative in the back- 
ground." From this genteel eclipse he reappeared upon 
the scene, and presently sought me out in the character 
of a generous editor. It is in this part that I best remem- 
ber him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful stoop; look- 
ing quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an ur- 
bane adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; 
cocking at you one peaked eyebrow with a great appear- 
ance of finesse; speaking low and sweet and thick, with 
a touch of burr; telKng strange tales with singular de- 
liberation and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. 
After all these ups and downs, he seemed still, like the 
rich student that he was of yore, to breathe of money; 
seemed still perfectly sure of himself and certain of his 
end. Yet he was then upon the brink of his last over- 
throw. He had set himself to found the strangest thing 
in our society: one of those periodical sheets from which 
men suppose themselves to learn opinions; in which 
young gentlemen from the universities are encouraged, 
at so much a line, to garble facts, insult foreign nations, 
and calumniate private individuals; and which are now 
the source of glory, so that if a man's name be often enough 
printed there, he becomes a kind of demigod; and people 
will pardon him when he talks back and forth, as they 
do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd liim to suffocation on 
railway platforms, as they did the other day to General 
Boulanger; and buy his literary works, as I hope you 
have just done for me. Our fathers, when they were 



90 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

upon some great enterprise, would sacrifice a life; build- 
ing, it may be, a favorite slave into the foundations of 
their palace. It was with his own life that my companion 
disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his paper 
single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of 
a cynic; up early and down late, for he was nothing of a 
sluggard; daily ear-wigging influential men, for he was 
a master of ingratiation. In that slender and silken 
fellow there must have been a rare vein of courage, that 
he should thus have died at his employment; and doubt- 
less ambition spoke loudly in his ear, and doubtless love 
also, for it seems there was a marriage in his view had he 
succeeded. But he died, and his paper died after him; 
and of all this grace, and tact, and courage, it must seem 
to om* blind eyes as if there had come literally nothing. 

These three students sat, as I was saying, in the corri- 
dor, under the mural tablet that records the virtues of 
Macbean, the former secretary. We would often smile 
at that ineloquent memorial, and thought it a poor thing 
to come into the world at all and leave no more behind 
one than Macbean. And yet of these thi'ee, two are gone 
and have left less; and this book, perhaps, when it is 
old and foxy, and some one picks it up in a corner of a 
book-shop, and glances through it, smiling at the old, 
graceless tm-ns of speech, and perhaps for the love of 
Alma Mater (which may be still extant and flourishing) 
buys it, not without haggling, for some pence — this book 
may "alone preserve a memory of James Walter Ferrier 
and Robert Glasgow Brown. 

Their thoughts ran very differently on that December 
morning; they were all on fire with ambition; and when 
they had called me in to them, and made me a sharer in 
their design, I too became drunken with pride and hope. 
We were to found a University magazine. A pair of 
little, active brothers — Livingstone by name, great 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 91 

skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept 
a book-shop over against the University building — had 
been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four 
were to be conjunct editors and, v/hat was the main 
point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by 
every rule of arithmetic — that flatterer of credulity — 
the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. 
Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went home that 
morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these 
three distinguished students was to me the most un- 
speakable advance; it was my first draught of considera- 
tion; it reconciled me to mj^seK and to my fellow men; 
and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, I could 
not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the 
bottom of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a 
grim fiasco; I knew it would not be worth reading; I 
knew, even if it were, that nobody would read it; and 
I kept wondering how I should be able, upon my compact 
income of twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, 
to meet my share in the expense. It was a comfortable 
thought to me that I had a father. 

The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover which was 
the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming; it ran 
four months in undisturbed obscurity, and died without 
a gasp. The first number was edited by all four of us 
with prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into 
the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I edited alone; 
and it has long been a solemn question who it was that 
edited the fourth. It would perhaps be still more diffi- 
cult to say who read it. Poor yellow sheet, that looked 
so hopefully in the Livingstones' window ! Poor, harm- 
less paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare 
on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense ! 
And, shall I say. Poor Editors? I cannot pity myself, 
to whom it was all pure gain. It was no news to me, but 



92 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

only the wholesome confirmation of my judgment, when 
the magazine struggled into half-birth, and instantly 
sickened and subsided into night. I had sent a copy 
to the lady with whom my heart was at that time some- 
what engaged, and who did all that in her lay to break 
it; and she, with some tact, passed over the gift and my 
cherished contributions in silence. I will not say that I 
was pleased at this; but I will tell her now, if by any 
chance she takes up the work of her former servant, that 
I thought the better of her taste. I cleared the decks 
after this lost engagement; had the necessary interview 
with my father, which passed off not amiss; paid over 
my share of the expense to the two little, active brothers, 
who rubbed their hands as much, but methought skipped 
rather less than formerly, having perhaps, these two 
also, embarked upon the enterprise with some graceful 
illusions; and then, reviewing the whole episode, I told 
myself that the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready; 
and to work I went again with my penny version-books, 
having fallen back in one day from the printed author to 
the manuscript student. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 



Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) was a member of 
the famous Cambridge group of writers, including also 
Longfellow and Lowell. He was born in Cambridge, 
Mass., and educated at Phillips Andover Academy and 
Harvard College, where Wendell Phillips the orator and 
John Lothrop Motley the historian were his classmates. 
He wrote verse for the college magazine, and an early 
poem, "Old Ironsides," was copied in newspapers all over 
the country. He studied medicine, and practised in Bos- 
ton, besides being a professor in the Harvard Medical 
School. In the moments that he could spare from his pro- 
fession he wrote several books that are a permanent addi- 
tion to American literature. When the Atlantic Monthly 
was projected, it was Holmes who suggested its name, and 
in the first number appeared the opening pages of The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Tahle. The novelty of the form, 
a sort of conversational essay, the sparkling wit, the keen 
comments on life, the apt turns of phrase, — all these made 
the Autocrat a joy to his readers. Two later volumes. 
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table and The Poet at the 
Breakfast-Table continued the same vein. Holmes's other 
works include a novel, Elsie Venner ; a volume of poems, 
and biographies of Emerson and Motley. The selection 
here given is from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 
While a thread of narrative runs through it, nearly all 
of the article is in the essay vein; the story is merely an 
opportunity for the writer to express his opinions on a 
variety of subjects. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS * 

(From The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table) 

(A Parenthesis) 

I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken 
together before this one. I found the effect of going out 
every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. 
Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just 
marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshen- 
ing cheeks when she smiled and nodded good morning 
to me from the schoolhouse steps. 

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At 
any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during 
the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that 
I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the pub- 
lishers that a separate volume, at my own risk and ex- 
pense, would be the proper method of bringing them be- 
fore the public. 

— I would have a woman as true as Death. At the 
first real lie which works from the heart outward, she 
should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, 
where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed 
on strange fruits which will make her all over again, 
even to her bones and marrow. — Whether gifted with 
the accident of beauty or not, she should have been 
moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath 
of fife made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is 

* Used by permission of Houghton, MiflBin Company, the author- 
ized publishers of Hohnes's works. 

95 



96 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one 
gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from 
the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them. — Proud she 
may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride, in 
the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, 
deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's 
Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bank- 
ruptcy. — She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, 
as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those 
whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, pro- 
claims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, 
but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned posi- 
tion makes people gracious in proper measure to all; 
but if a woman put on airs with her real equals, she had 
something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, 
or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged 
people, who know family histories, generally see through 
it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, 
that is the maternal grandfather, — said a wise old friend 
to me, — he was a boor. — Better too few words, from the 
woman we love, than too many: while she is silent, Na- 
ture is working for her; while she talks, she is working 
for herself. — Love is sparingly soluble in the words of 
men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable 
of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's 
heart can hold. 

—Whether I said any or all of these things to the 
schoolmistress, or not, — whether I stole them out of 
Lord Bacon, — whether I cribbed them from Balzac, 
— whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian * 
wisdom, — or whether I have just found them in my head, 
laid there by that solemn fowl. Experience (who, accord- 
ing to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops 

* Tupperian, a reference to Martin F. Tupper, author of Proverbial 
Philosophy, a book of precepts and advice in verse. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 97 

real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise men have said more 
foolish things, — and foolish men, I don't doubt, have 
said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I 
had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not 
feel bound to report. 

— You are a stranger to me, Ma'am. — I don't doubt 
you would like to know all I said to the schoolmistress. — 
I sha'n't do it; — I had rather get the publishers to return 
the money you have invested in these pages. Besides, 
I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what 
I like of what I remember. 

— My idea was, in the first place, to search out the 
picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, to 
those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it was a 
pleasure to look at them in company with my young 
friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the Frank- 
lin-Place front yards or borders: Commerce is just putting 
his granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small 
seraglio gardens, into which one can get a peep through 
the crevices of high fences, — one in Myrtle Street, or at 
the back of it, — here and there one at the North and 
South ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then 
the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers 
Street, which hold their outspread hands over your head 
(as I said in my poem the other day), and look as if they 
were whispering, "May grace, mercy, and peace be with 
you!" — and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there 
are certain patches of ground, which, having lain neg- 
lected for a time, Nature, who always has her pockets 
full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered 
with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with 
each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and 
succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry 
which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over 
the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pre- 



98 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

tends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, 
in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegeta- 
tion, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public 
Garden as ignominiously as a group of young tatterde- 
malions playing pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sunday- 
school boys with their teacher at their head. 

But then the Professor had one of his burrows in that 
region, and puts everything in high colors relating to it. 
That is his way about everything. — I hold any man 
cheap, — he said, — of whom nothing stronger can be 
uttered than that all his geese are swans. — How is that, 
Professor? — said I; — I should have set you down for one 
of that sort. — Sir, — said he, — I am proud to say, that 
Nature has so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much 
as a duck without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever 
swam the basin in the garden of Luxembourg. And the 
Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like 
one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses. 

I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of 
Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of 
cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks on a 
square mile or two of earth which was green once. The 
trees look down from the hillsides and ask each other, 
as they stand on tiptoe, — "What are these people about?" 
And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper 
back, — "We will go and see." So the small herbs pack 
themselves up in the least possible bundles, and wait 
until the wind steals to them at night and whispers, — 
"Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the 
great city, — one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout 
on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich 
gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone 
where nothing but a man is buried, — and there they 
grow, looking down on the generations of men from 
mouldy roofs, looking up from between the le^-trodden 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 99 

pavements, looking out through iron cemetery-railings. 
Listen to them, when there is only a light breath stirring, 
and you will hear them saying to each other, — "Wait 
awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those 
narrow green lines that border the roads leading from 
the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the 
trees repeat in low murmurs to each other, — "Wait 
awhile !" By and by the flow of life in the streets ebbs, 
and the old leafy inhabitants — the smaller tribes always 
in front — saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, 
but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great 
stones gape from each other with the crowding of their 
roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the 
granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their 
solemn line of march, and never rest until they have en- 
camped in the market-place. Wait long enough and you 
will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in 
its yellow underground arms; that was the corner-stone 
of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, this imper- 
turbable Nature ! 

— Let us cry ! — 

But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks 
with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not 
tell you something about them. Let me alone, and I 
shall talk to you more than I ought to, probably. We 
never tell our secrets to people that pump for them. 

Books we talked about, and education. It was her 
duty to know something of these, and of course she did. 
Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I 
found that the difference between her reading and mine 
was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. 
The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman 
goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half 
the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, — but 
she goes into aU the corners and attends to the leaves as 



100 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

much as to the covers. — Books are the negative pictures 
of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives 
their images, the more nicely the finest lines are repro- 
duced. A woman (of the right kind), reading after a 
man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, 
and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. 

But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly 
together. I thought I knew something about that, — 
that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the 
purpose. 

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge 
sucks up water, — to be steeped and soaked in its realities 
as a hide fills its pores lying seven years in a tan-pit, — to 
have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up 
the stream that runs through the flume upon its float- 
boards, — to have curled up in the keenest spasms and 
flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing sick- 
ness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for 
three or four score years, — to have fought all the devils 
and clasped all the angels of its delirium, — and then, just 
at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled 
down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice- 
cold stream of some human language or other, one might 
think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring 
and temper in it All this I thought my power and 
province. 

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while 
one meets with a single soul greater than all the living 
pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer 
sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and 
weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are 
meek, slight women who have weighed all which this 
planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the 
palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. 
Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 101 

of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city life 
were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil 
face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often 
sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters 
we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and 
lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, — 
unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the 
cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were 
meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great 
Passion. 

— I never addressed one word of love to the school- 
mistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed 
to me that we talked of everything but love on that par- 
ticular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more tim- 
idity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly 
shown among our people at the boarding-house. In 
fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast- 
table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just 
then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a 
passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave 
at noon, — with the condition, however, of being released 
in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The school- 
mistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet. 

It was on the Common that we were walking. The 
mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various 
branches leading from it in dilTerent directions. One 
of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward 
across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. 
We called it the long path, and were fond of it. 

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust 
habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that 
morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making 
myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, 
— Will you take the long path with me? — Certainly, — 
said the schoolmistress, — with much pleasure. — Think, — 



102 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 

I said, — before you answer : if you take the long path with 
me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more ! — 
The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden move- 
ment, as if an arrow had struck her. 

One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard 
by, the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. — 
Pray, sit down, — I said. — No, no, she answered, softly, — 
I will walk the long path with you ! 

— The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, 
arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, 
very charmingly, — "Good morning, my dears!" 



THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 



JOHN RUSKIN 

THE SKY 



John Ruskin (1819-1900), eminent as author, art 
critic, and social reformer, was the son of a wealthy English 
merchant. His father was a lover of pictures, and took 
the boy to see the great collections in public and private 
galleries in England. His mother read to him daily from 
the Bible, and to this Ruskin attributed the clearness and 
beauty of his style. He was educated at Oxford. His 
first intellectual interest was in art, and his first book was 
Modern Painters. Later volumes were Stones of Venice^ 
and Seven Lamps of Architecture. These established his 
position as one of the great art critics of his time, and as 
a master of English prose. He next turned his attention 
to social and economic questions. It was his belief that 
no nation could produce great art unless it had moral 
and spiritual greatness as a foundation. He saw the 
English people in their great industrial development, 
forgetful of higher things. He wrote books and delivered 
lectures untiringly in the effort to arouse the nation to a 
sense of its wrong aims. Nor did he stop at writing. The 
death of his father left him a fortune of nearly a million 
dollars: he spent practically all of this in various proj- 
ects for bettering the condition of the working people 
of England. He built model tenements, established 
co-operative associations, started schools for workers. 
Many of the reform movements of to-day owe their origin 
to John Ruskin. 

He wrote a great number of books, dealing mainly 
with the three great interests of liis life, painting, archi- 
tecture, and political economy. The selection ''The Sky" 
illustrates Ruskin's wonderful descriptive power, and his 
gift of writing prose that has the beauty and music of 
poetry. 



JOHN RUSKIN 

THE SKY 

(From Modern Painters) 

It is a strange thing how little in general people know 
about the sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature 
has done more for the sake of pleasing man — more for 
the sole and evident purpose of talking to him, and teach- 
ing him — than in any other of her works; and it is just 
the part in which we least attend to her. There are not 
many of her other works in which some more material 
or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is 
not answered by every part of their organization; but 
every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, 
be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, 
ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and 
everything well watered, and so all left blue again till 
next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening 
mist for dew — and instead of this, there is not a moment 
of any day of our lives, when Nature is not producing 
scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, 
and working still upon such exquisite and constant prin- 
ciples of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain 
it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual plea- 
sure. And every man, wherever placed, however far 
from other sources of interest of or beauty, has this doing 
for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth 
can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that 
man should live always in the midst of them; he injures 

105 



106 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he is always 
with them; but the sky is for all: bright as it is, it is not 

"too bright nor good 
For human nature's daily food;"* 

it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort 
and exalting of the heart, — for soothing it, and purifying 
it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes 
capricious, sometimes awful — never the same for two 
moments together; almost human in its passions, almost 
spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, 
its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its 
ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal 
is essential. 

And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a sub- 
ject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensa- 
tions; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more 
clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to 
the intention of the Supreme that we are to receive more 
from the covering vault than the light and the dew which 
we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succes- 
sion of meaningless and monotonous accident, too com- 
mon and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watch- 
fulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments 
of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as 
a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak 
of? , One says, it has been wet; and another, it has been 
windy, and another, it has been warm. Who among the 
whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms and the 
precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded 
the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow 
sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their 
summits until they melted and mouldered away in the 

•Quoted from Wordsworth's "She was a Phantom of Delight." 



JOHN RUSKIN 107 

dust of blue rain ? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds 
where the sunlight left them last night, and the west 
wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All 
has passed unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be 
ever shaken off even for an instant, it is only by what is 
gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not in the 
broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, 
nor in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirl- 
wind, that the highest characters of the sublime are de- 
veloped. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, 
but in the still small voice. They are but the blunt 
and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be 
addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in 
quiet and unsubdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, 
the deep and the calm, and the perpetual; that which 
must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is under- 
stood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and 
yet vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never 
repeated, which are to be found always, yet each found 
but once; it is through these that the lesson of devot'on 
is chieSy taught, and the blessing of beauty given. 

We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and 
gray; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, 
though not the most dazzling, of the hues of heaven. 
Often in om* English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn 
form soft, level fields, which "melt imperceptibly into 
the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into apparent 
bars, crossing the sheets of broader clouds above; and all 
these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure 
rose-color, and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, 
but misty-soft; the barred masses, when seen nearer, 
composed of clusters or tresses of cloud, like floss silk; 
looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of 
lighted rain. 

Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are? 



108 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

That mist which Hes in the morning so softly in the 
valley, level and white, through which the tops of the 
trees rise as if through an inundation — why is it so heavy, 
and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail 
that it will melt away utterly into splendor of morning 
when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? 
Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as 
of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun 
full on their fiery flanks, — why are they so light, their 
bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? 
Why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as 
he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear; while 
the valley vapor gains again upon the earth, like a shroud ? 
Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump 
of pines; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts 
them, wreathing yet round them, and yet, — and yet, — 
slowly; now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's 
veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an instant, 
and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do 
with that clump of pines, that it broods by them, and 
waves itself among their branches, to and fro? Has it 
hidden a cloudy treasure among the moss at their roots, 
which it watches thus? Or has some strong enchanter 
charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within 
those bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent 
like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, the highest 
of all the hills — that white arch which never forms but 
over the supreme crest, — how it is stayed there, repelled 
apparently from the snow, — nowhere touching it, the 
clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet 
never leaving it — poised as a white bird hovers over its 
nest ! Or those war clouds that gather on the horizon, 
dragon-crested, tongued with fire, — how is their barbed 
strength bridled ? What bits are those they are champing 
with their vaporous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? 
Leagued leviathans of the Sea and Heaven, — out of their 



JOHN RUSKIN 109 

nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids 
of the morning; the sword of him that layeth at them can- 
not hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where 
ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the 
measm-es of their march? Fierce mm-mm-ers, answering 
each other from morning until evening — what rebuke is 
this which has awed them into peace; — what hand has 
reined them back by the way in which they came? 

I know not if the reader will think at first that ques- 
tions like these are easily answered. So far from it, I 
rather believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds 
never will be understood by us at all. "Knowest thou 
the balancing of the clouds?" Is the answer ever to be 
one of pride? The wondrous works of Him, which is 
perfect in knowledge! Is our knowledge ever to be 
so? . . . 

On some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the 
night mists first rise from off the plain, watch their white 
and lake-like fields, as they float in level bays, and wind- 
ing gulfs about the islanded summits of the lower hills, 
untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet 
than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch 
when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, 
how the foam of their undulating surface parts, and passes 
away, and down under their depths the glittering city 
and green pasture lie like Atlantis, between the white 
paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every 
moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as 
the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and 
the confused crests and ridges of the dark hiUs shorten 
their gray shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, 
and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the 
ravines, and floating up toward you, along the winding 
valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with 
the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher 
hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back. 



110 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, 
and set in its lustre, to appear again above in the serene 
heaven like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundation- 
less, and inaccessible, their very base vanishing in the 
unsubstantial, and making blue of the deep lake below. 
Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists 
gather themselves into white towers, and stand like for- 
tresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, 
only piled with every instant higher and higher into the 
sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and 
out of the pale blue of the horizon you will see forming 
and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapors, 
which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their gray 
network, and take the light off the landscape with an 
eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the 
motion of the leaves, together; — and then you will see 
horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and 
lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, 
among the shoulders of the hills; you never see them form, 
but when you look back to a place which was clear an 
instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice 
as a hawk pauses over his prey; — and then you will hear 
the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see 
those watch-towers of vapor swept away from their foun- 
dations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to 
the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black 
bending fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the 
lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And 
then as the sun sinks you shall see the storm drift for an 
instant from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smok- 
ing and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like 
rags of capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again, — 
while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but 
burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could 
reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolUng 



JOHN RUSKIN 111 

cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, 
dyeing all the air about it with blood; — and then you shall 
hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, 
and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of 
the eastern hills, brighter, brighter yet, till the large white 
circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred 
clouds, step by step, line by line; star after star she 
quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead 
an army of pale, penetrable fleecy wreaths in the heaven, 
to give light upon the earth, which move together hand 
in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so mea- 
sured in their unity of motion that the whole heaven 
seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. 
And then wait yet for one hour, until the east again be- 
comes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against 
it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one 
by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white gla- 
ciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, 
like mighty serpents with scales of fire: watch the col- 
umnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downward chasm 
by chasm, each in itself a new morning — their long ava- 
lanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the light- 
ning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar- 
smoke up to heaven, the rose-light of their silent domes 
flushing that heaven about them, and above them, pierc- 
ing with purer light thi-ough its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
casting a new glory on every wreath, as it passes by, 
until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven 
with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault beyond 
vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of 
angels: and then when you can look no more for gladness, 
and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the 
Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered 
this His message unto men ! 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

THE SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 



John Henry Newman (1801-1890), often called Cardinal 
Newman, belonged to the writers of the Victorian group. 
He was the son of a London banker. He early showed 
his bent to literature, writing verses at nine and a drama 
at twelve. Later he entered Oxford, where he won a fel- 
lowship. His life was spent as a clergyman, first in the 
Church of England, later in the Roman CathoHc faith; 
the reasons for his change of belief are told in his Apologia 
pro Vita Sua (Apology for His Life). He was rector of 
the Catholic University at Dubhn from 1854 to 1858; 
he was made a cardinal in 1879. Most of his life was 
spent at Birmingham, England. His writings include two 
novels. Loss and Gain and Callista ; a number of poems, 
including the well-known hymn "Lead, Kindly Light"; 
and a volume of essays entitled The Idea of a Univer- 
sity, written while he was at Dublin University. 

Newman is considered one of the great masters of Eng- 
lish prose. He took the greatest pains with his work, 
often writing whole chapters over and over again, be- 
sides making innumerable corrections. But in the fin- 
ished work there is no trace of labor; his essays have the 
clearness and beauty of a statue. The description of 
Athens, in the selection here given, is one of the finest ex- 
amples of Newman's style. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
THE SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 

(From Historical Sketches, vol. Ill) 

If we would know what a University is, considered in 
its elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first 
and most celebrated home of Em-opean literature and 
source of European civilization, to the bright and beau- 
tiful Athens, — Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, 
and then sent back again to the business of Ufe, the youth 
of the Western World for a long thousand years. Seated 
on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly 
suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowl- 
edge; yet what it lost in convenience of approach, it 
gained in its neighborhood to the traditions of the mysteri- 
ous East, and in the loveliness of the region in which it 
lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land, where all 
archetypes of the great and the fair were fou^d in sub- 
stantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and 
all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste 
and philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal 
court, where there was no sovereignty but that of mind, 
and nobility but that of genius, where professors were 
rulers, and princes did homage, hither flocked continually 
from the very corners of the orbis terrarum* the many- 
tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, 
in order to gain wisdom. 

Pisistratus had in an early age discovered and nursed 
the infant genius of his people, and Cimon, after the 
Persian war, had given it a home. That war had estab- 
lished the naval supremacy of Athens; she had become 

* Orbis terrarum, the circle of the world. 
115 



116 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

an imperial state; and the lonians, bound to her by the 
double chain of kindred and of subjection, were import- 
ing into her both their merchandise and their civilization. 
The arts and philosophy of the Asiatic coast were easily 
carried across the sea, and there was Cimon, as I have 
said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive them with 
due honors. Not content with patronizing their pro- 
fessors, he built the first of those noble porticos, of which 
we hear so much in Athens, and he formed the groves, 
which in process of time became the celebrated Academy. 
Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens it was 
one of the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon 
took in hand the wild wood, pruned and dressed it, and 
laid it out with handsome walks and welcome fountains. 
Nor, while hospitable to the authors of the city's civili- 
zation, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her pros- 
perity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous 
branches over the merchants who assembled in the Agora, 
for many generations. 

Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of 
bounty; for all the while their ships had been carrying 
forth the intellectual fame of Athens to the western world. 
Then commenced what may be called her University 
existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the 
government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plu- 
tarch to have entertained the idea of making Athens the 
capital of federated Greece: in this he failed, but his 
encouragement of such men as Phidias and Anaxagoras 
led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sover- 
eignty over a far wider empire. Little understanding 
the sources of her own greatness, Athens would go to 
war: peace is the interest of a seat of commerce and the 
arts; but to war she went; yet to her, whether peace or 
war, it mattered not. The political power of Athens 
waned and disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell; centuries 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 117 

rolled away, — they did but bring fresh triumphs to the city 
of the poet and the sage. There at length the swarthy 
Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blue-eyed 
Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, 
gazed without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. 
Revolution after revolution passed over the face of 
Europe, as well as of Greece, but still she was there, — 
Athens, the city of mind, — as radiant, as splendid, as 
delicate, as young as ever she had been. 

Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue 
iEgean, many a spot is there more beautiful or sublime 
to see, many a territory more ample; but there was one 
charm in Attica, wliich in the same perfection was no- 
where else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of 
Argos, the Thessalian vale, these had not the gift; Boeotia, 
which lay to its immediate north, was notorious for its 
very want of it. The heavy atmosphere of that Boeotia 
might be good for vegetation, but it was associated in 
popular belief with the dulness of the Boeotian intellect: 
on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness, 
and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and em- 
blem of its genius, did that for it which earth did not; — 
it brought out every bright hue and tender shade of the 
landscape over which it was spread, and would have 
illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged 
country. 

A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest 
length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky 
barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent moun- 
tains, commanding the plain, — Parnes, Pentelicus, and 
Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not 
always full; — such is about the report which the agent 
of a London company would have made of Attica. He 
would report that the climate was mild; the hills were 
limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture- 



118 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

land than at first survey might have been expected, 
sufl&cient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries produc- 
tive; silver-mines once, but long since worked out; figs 
fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would 
not think of noting down, was, that that olive-tree was 
so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited 
a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the 
light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, 
and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think 
of writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of 
which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and sub- 
dued, the colors on the marble, till they had a softness 
and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture 
looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He 
would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant at- 
mosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive for- 
got its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus 
or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of 
the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted 
Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; 
nor take much account of the rare flavor of its honey, 
since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English 
demand. He would look over the ^gean from the 
height he had ascended: he would follow with his eye 
the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian 
headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, 
when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of via- 
duct thereto across the sea: but that fancy would not 
occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet 
biUows with their white edges down below; nor of those 
graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, wliich 
slowly rise aloft like water spirits froni the deep, then 
shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, 
and disappear, in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, 
incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 119 

nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of 
soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore, — he 
would not deign to notice that restless living element at 
all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. 
Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined coloring, nor the 
graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting 
crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium 
by the declining sun; — our agent of a mercantile firm 
would not value these matters even at a low figure. 
Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon 
pilgrim student come from a semi-barbarous land to that 
small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might 
take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations 
of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger 
from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauri- 
tania, who in a scene so different from that of his chilly, 
woody swamps, or of his fiery choking sands, learned at 
once what a real University must be, by coming to under- 
stand the sort of country which was its suitable home. 

Nor was this all that a University required, and found 
in Athens. No one, even there, could live on poetry. 
If the students at that famous place had nothing better 
than bright hues and soothing sounds, they would not 
have been able or disposed to turn their residence there 
to much account. Of course they must have the means 
of Hving, nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens 
was to be an Alma Mater at the time, or to remain after- 
ward a pleasant thought in their memory. And so they 
had: be it recollected Athens was a port, and a mart of 
trade, perhaps the first in Greece; and this was very much 
to the point, when a number of strangers were ever flock- 
ing to it, whose combat was to be with intellectual, not 
physical difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily 
wants supplied, that they might be at leisure to set about 
furnishing their minds. Now, barren as was the soil 



120 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

of Attica, and bare the face of the country, yet it had 
only too many resources for an elegant, nay luxurious 
abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, 
that it was a common saying, that the productions, which 
were found singly elsewhere, were brought all together 
in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple of subsistence in 
such a climate, came from the isles of the ^gean; fine 
wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves, as now, 
from the Euxine, and timber too; and iron and brass 
from the coasts of the Mediterranean. The Athenian 
did not condescend to manufactures himself, but encour- 
aged them in others; and a population of foreigners caught 
at the lucrative occupation both for home consumption 
and for exportation. Their cloth, and other textures 
for dress and furniture, and their hardware — for instance, 
armor — were in great request. Labor was cheap; stone 
and marble in plenty; and the taste and skill, which at 
first were devoted to public buildings, as temples and 
porticos, were in course of time applied to the mansions 
of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is un- 
deniable that art did much more. 

Here some one will interrupt me with the remark: 
"by the by, where are we, and whither are we going? — 
what has all this to do with a University? at least what 
has it to do with education? It is instructive doubtless; 
but still how much has it to do with your subject ? " Now 
I beg to assure the reader that I am most conscientiously 
employed upon my subject; and I should have thought 
every one would have seen this: however, since the ob- 
jection is made, I may be allowed to pause awhile, and 
show distinctly the drift of what I have been saying, be- 
fore I go farther. What has this to do with my subject ! 
why, the question of the site is the very first that comes 
into consideration, when a Studium Generale * is contem- 
plated; for that site should be a liberal and noble one; 
, * Studium Generale, a course of study embracing all subjects. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 121 

who will deny it ? All authorities agree in this, and very- 
little reflection will be sufficient to make it clear. I 
recollect a conversation I once had on this very subject 
with a very eminent man. I was a youth of eighteen, 
and was leaving my University for the Long Vacation, 
when I found myself in company in a public conveyance 
with a middle-aged person, whose face was strange to 
me. However, it was the great academical luminary of 
the day, whom afterward I knew very well. Luckily 
for me, I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a 
fancy of his, as his friends knew, to make himself on easy 
terms especially with stage-coach companions. So, what 
with my flippancy and his condescension, I managed to 
hear many things which were novel to me at the time; 
and one point which he was strong upon, and was evi- 
dently fond of urging, was the material pomp and cir- 
cumstance which should environ a great seat of learning. 
He considered it was worth the consideration of the 
government, whether Oxford should not stand in a do- 
main of its own. An ample range, say four miles in di- 
ameter, should be turned into wood and meadow, and 
the University should be approached on all sides by a 
magnificent park, with fine trees in groups and groves 
and avenues, and with glimpses and views of the fair 
city, as the traveller drew near it. There is nothing 
surely absurd in the idea, though it would cost a round 
sum to realize it. What has a better claim to the purest 
and fairest possessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom ? 
So thought my coach companion; and he did but express 
the tradition of ages and the instinct of mankind. 

For instance, take the great University of Paris. That 
famous school engrossed as its territory the whole south 
bank of the Seine, and occupied one half, and that the 
pleasanter half, of the city. King Louis had the island 
pretty well as his own, — it was scarcely more than a 
fortification; and the north of the river was given over to 



122 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

the nobles and citizens to do what they could with its 
marshes; but the eligible south, rising from the stream, 
which swept around its base, to the fair summit of St. 
Genevieve, with its broad meadows, its vineyards and 
its gardens, and with the sacred elevation of Montmartre 
confronting it, all this was the inheritance of the Uni- 
versity. There w^as that pleasant Pratum, stretching 
along the river's bank, in which the students for centuries 
took their recreation, which Alcuin seems to mention in 
his farewell verses to Paris, and which has given a name 
to the great Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres. For long 
years it was devoted to the purposes of innocent and 
healthy enjoyment; but evil times came on the University; 
disorder arose within its precincts, and the fair meadow 
became the scene of party brawls; heresy stalked through 
Europe, and Germany and England no longer sending 
their contingent of students, a heavy debt was the con- 
sequence to the academical body. To let their land was 
the only resource left to them: buildings rose upon it, 
and spread along the green sod, and the country at length 
became town. Great was the grief and indignation of 
the doctors and masters, when this catastrophe occurred. 
"A wretched sight," said the Proctor of the German 
nation, "a wretched sight, to witness the sale of that 
ancient manor, whither the Muses were wont to wander 
for retirement and pleasure. Whither shall the j^'outhful 
student now betake himself, what relief will he find for 
his eyes, wearied with intense reading, now that the 
pleasant stream is taken from him?" Two centmies 
and more have passed since this complaint was uttered; 
and time has shown that the outward calamity, which 
it recorded, was but the emblem of the great moral revolu- 
tion, which was to follow; till the institution itself has 
followed its green meadows, into the region of things 
which once were and now are not. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

THE SEA FOGS 



While Robert Louis Stevenson was living in an art 
colony near Paris he met Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, and fell 
in love with her. She returned to her home in California; 
Stevenson heard that she was ill and in trouble, and rushed 
to her assistance. His means were so scanty that he 
crossed as a steerage passenger, and travelled from New 
York to San Francisco in an emigrant train. The ex- 
perience nearly cost him his life, but Mrs. Osbourne 
nursed him through his illness, and in the spring of 1880 
they were married. The honeymoon was spent in an 
abandoned mining camp in the California mountains: 
the record of these weeks is given in the book The Silverado 
Squatters. They had chosen a lofty spot to be out of the 
fogs; in the following essay Stevenson describes how he 
was almost overtaken by them. One can imagine the 
frail, eager half-invalid, his own danger forgotten in the 
transport of gazing upon the wonderful spectacle, and 
perhaps even -as he looked, fitting words to the scene. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

THE SEA FOGS 

(From The Silverado Squatters) 

A change in the color of the light usually called me in 
the morning. By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks 
in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and 
separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of 
dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to 
marvel how the qualities could be combined. At an 
earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter were still quietly 
colored, but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts 
in the canyon already glowed with sunlight in a wonder- 
ful compound of gold and rose and green; and this too 
would kindle, although more mildly and with rainbow 
tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. If I were sleeping 
heavily, it was the bold blue that struck me awake; if 
more lightly, then I would come to myself in that earlier 
and fairer light. 

One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness 
called me. I rose and turned to the east, not for my 
devotions, but for air. The night had been very still. 
The little private gale that blew every evening in our 
canyon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, 
had swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed 
not a sigh of wind had shaken the tree tops; and our 
barrack, for all its breaches, was less fresh that morning 
than of wont. But I had no sooner reached the window 
than I forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and 
I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the 
crazy plank to the platform. 

125 



126 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

The sun was still concealed below the opposite hill- 
tops, though it was shining already, not twenty feet 
above my head, on our own mountain slope. But the 
scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed. 
Napa Valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes 
and woody foot-hills of the range; and in their place, not 
a thousand feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. 
It was as though I had gone to bed the night before, 
safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened 
in a bay upon the coast. I had seen these inundations 
from below; at Calistoga I had risen and gone abroad in 
the early morning, coughing and sneezing, under fathoms 
on fathoms of gray sea vapor, like a cloudy sky — a dull 
sight for the artist, and a painful experience for the in- 
valid. But to sit aloft one's self in the pure air and 
under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down 
on the submergence of the valley, was strangely differ- 
ent and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hill- 
tops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about 
the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of 
these rough mountains. The color of that fog ocean was 
a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the 
Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something 
like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so opa- 
line; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, 
that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its 
gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the 
wee^s or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay 
in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morn- 
ing tremble with a sound. 

As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to ob- 
serve that this sea was not so level as at first sight it 
appeared to be. Away in the extreme south, a little hill 
of fog arose against the sky above the general surface, 
and as it had already caught the sun, it shone on the 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 127 

hori2X)n like the topsails of some giant ship. There were 
huge waves, stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a 
frozen sea; and yet, as I looked again, I was not sure 
but they were moving after all, with a slow and august 
advance. And while I was yet doubting, a promontory 
of the hills some four or five miles away, conspicuous by 
a bouquet of tall pines, was in a single instant overtaken 
and swallowed up. It reappeared in a little, with its 
pines, but this time as an islet, and only to be swallowed 
up once more and then for good. This set me looking 
nearer, and I saw that in every cove along the line of 
mountains the fog was being piled in higher and higher, 
as though by some wind that was inaudible to me. I 
could trace its progress, one pine-tree first growing hazy 
and then disappearing after another; although some- 
times there was none of this forerunning haze, but the 
whole opaque white ocean gave a start and swallowed a 
piece of mountain at a gulp. It was to flee these poison- 
ous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and climbed so high 
among the mountains. And now, behold, here came the 
fog to besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came 
so beautifully that my first thought was of welcome. 

The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all 
the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold across that 
white ocean. An eagle, or some other very great bird 
of the mountain, came wheeling over the nearer pine 
tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to 
look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, per- 
haps with terror, for the aeries of her comrades. Then, 
with a long cry, she disappeared again toward Lake 
County and the clearer air. At length it seemed to me 
as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old land- 
marks, by whose disappearance I had measured its ad- 
vance, here a crag, there a brave pine-tree, now began, 
in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into 



128 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This 
was not Noah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and 
would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily- 
relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went 
into the house to light the fire. 

I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more mounted 
the platform to look abroad. The fog ocean had swelled 
up enormously since last I saw it; and a few hundred feet 
below me, in the deep gap where the Toll House stands 
and the road runs through into Lake County, it had al- 
ready topped the slope, and was pouring over and down 
the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed 
along with it; and though I was still in calm air, I could 
see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident 
sighing mounted to me where I stood. 

Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the 
ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a shoulder 
of the mountain still warded it out of our canyon. Napa 
Valley and its bounding hills were now utterly blotted 
out. The fog, sunny-white in the sunshine, was pouring 
over into Lake County in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing 
tree tops appearing and disappearing in the spray. The 
air struck with a little chill, and set me coughing. It 
smelled strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing-house, 
but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt. 

Had it not been for two things — the sheltering spur 
which answered as a dike, and the great valley on the 
other side which rapidly engulfed whatever mounted — 
our own little platform in the canyon must have been 
already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. 
As it was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied our 
minds. We were set just out of the wind, and but just 
above the fog; we could listen to the voice of the one as 
to music on the stage; we could plunge our eyes down 
into the other, as into some flowing stream from over the 
parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a strange, 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 129 

impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the powers of 
nature, and saw the familiar landscape changing from 
moment to moment like figures in a dream. 

The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had 
this been indeed the deluge, I should have felt more 
strongly, but the emotion would have been similar in 
kind. I played with the idea, as the child flees in de- 
lighted terror from the creations of his fancy. The look 
of the thing helped me. And when at last I began to 
flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from 
the raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also part 
in play. 

As I ascended the mountainside, I came once more to 
overlook the upper surface of the fog; but it wore a dif- 
ferent appearance from what I had beheld at daybreak. 
For, first, the sun now fell on it from high overhead, and 
its surface shone and undulated like a great nor'land 
moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. 
And next the new level must have been a thousand or 
fifteen hundred feet higher than the old, so that only 
five or six points of all the broken country below me, still 
stood out. Napa Valley was now one with Sonoma on 
the west. On the hither side, only a thin scattered fringe 
of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the 
fog was pouring over, like an ocean, into the blue clear 
sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for 
it fell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following 
the watershed; and the hilltops in that quarter were still 
clear cut upon the eastern sky. 

Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges 
on the other side, the deluge was immense. A spray of 
thin vapor was thrown high above it, rising and falling, 
and blown into fantastic shapes. The speed of its course 
was like a mountain torrent. Here and there a few tree 
tops were discovered and then whelmed again; and for 
one second, the bough of a dead pine beckoned out of the 



130 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

spray like the arm of a drowning man. But still the 
imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited for some- 
thing more. Had this indeed been water (as it seemed 
so, to the eye), with what a plunge of reverberating thun- 
der would it have rolled upon its course, disembowelling 
mountains and deracinating pines ! And yet water it 
was, and sea-water at that — true Pacific billows, only 
somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid air among the hilltops. 

I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel 
and dwarf underwood of Mount Saint Helena, until I 
could look right down upon Silverado, and admire the 
favored nook in which it lay. The sunny plain of fog 
was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting 
spur a gigantic accumulation of cottony vapor threat- 
ened, with every second, to blow over and submerge our 
homestead; but the vortex setting past the Toll House 
was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the 
arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sun- 
shine. About eleven, however, thin spray came flying 
over the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog 
had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the last 
effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, and 
began to blow squally from the mountain summit; and 
by half-past one, all that world of sea fogs was utterly 
routed and flying here and there into the south in little 
rags of cloud. And instead of a lone sea beach, we found 
ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountainside, 
with the clear green country far below us, and the light 
smoke of Calistoga blowing in the air. 

This was the great Russian campaign for that season. 
Now and then, in the early morning, a little white lakelet 
of fog would be seen far down in Napa Valley; but the 
heights were not again assailed, nor was the surrounding 
world again shut off from Silverado. 



HENRY D. THOREAU 
BRUTE NEIGHBORS 



Henrj^ David Thoreau (1817-1862) was one of the most 
original figures in American literature. He was born at 
Concord, Mass., a neighbor of Emerson's, and educated 
at Harvard. His father was a manufacturer of lead- 
pencils. Henry worked with him, and so improved the 
process that he turned out a better pencil than had ever 
been produced before. His neighbors congratulated him, 
telhng him that his fortune was made. But he said that 
he would never make another pencil. "Why should I? 
I would not do again what I have done once." The 
remark was characteristic of Thoreau; he was not con- 
cerned with making money, but with living according to 
his own ideas. He had some skill as a carpenter and as 
a survej'^or; he would work at these occupations occa- 
sionally — the rest of his days he spent in reading, writing, 
and observing nature. Wishing to spend some time in 
solitude, he built a hut on the shore of Walden pond, near 
Concord, and lived there alone for two years. The record 
of this experience is given in Walden, or Life in the Woods, 
from which the chapter here printed is taken. In addition 
to Walden, he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimac 
Rivers; Excursions ; and Cape Cod. His Journals have 
been published in several volumes. All of his books are 
made up of descriptions of what he saw, observed with 
the trained eye of a naturalist, and set down with the 
pen of a poet. To these descriptions he adds his own 
reflections upon men and things. 



HENRY D. THOREAU 

BRUTE NEIGHBORS 

(From Walden, or Life in the Woods) 

Why do precisely these objects which we behold raake 
a world? Why has man just these species of animals for 
his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled 
this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay* and Co. have put 
animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of bur- 
den, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts. 

The mice which haunted my house were not the com- 
mon ones, which are said to have been introduced into 
the country, but a wild native kind not found in the vil- 
lage. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it 
interested him much. When I was building, one of these 
had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid 
the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come 
out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at 
my feet- It probably had never seen a man before; and 
it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my 
shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the 
sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, whidi 
it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with 
my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, 
and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper 
which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and 
dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last 
I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, 

* Pilpay. The Fables of Pilpay is an ancient work, originally 
written in Sanskrit. It is a series of stories about animals, each story 
teaching a lesson. 

133 



134 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward 
cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. 

A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for pro- 
tection in a pine which grew against the house. In June 
the partridge {Tetrao umhellus), which is so shy a bird, 
led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the 
rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to 
them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself 
the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on 
your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirl- 
wind had swept them away, and they so exactly resem- 
ble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveller has 
placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the 
whirr of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls 
and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his 
attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The 
parent wiU sometimes roll and spin round before you in 
such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, 
detect what kind of a creature it is. The young squat 
still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and 
mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, 
nor will your approach make them run again and betray 
themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your 
eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I 
have held them in my open hand at such a time, and 
still their only care, obedient to their mother and their 
instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. 
So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid 
them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on 
its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same 
position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow 
like the young of most birds, but more perfectly devel- 
oped and precocious even than chickens. 

The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their 
open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence 



HENRY D. THOREAU 135 

seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the 
purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. 
Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval 
with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another 
such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such 
a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often 
shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these inno- 
cents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or 
gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they 
so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a 
hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are 
lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers 
them again. These were my hens and chickens. 

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free 
though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves 
in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. 
How retired the otto manages to live here! He grows 
to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps with- 
out any human being getting a glimpse of him. I for- 
merly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my 
house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering 
at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the 
shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read 
a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and 
of a brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile 
from my field. The approach to this was through a suc- 
cession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch- 
pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a 
very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white 
pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I had 
dug out the spring, and made a well of clear gray water, 
where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and 
thither I went for this purpose almost every day in mid- 
summer, when the pond was warmest. Thither too the 
woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, 



136 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they 
ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would 
leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer 
and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken 
wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her 
young, who would already have taken up their march, 
with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as 
she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I 
could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle-doves 
sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of 
the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, 
coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly fa- 
miliar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long 
enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its 
inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. 

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. 
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my 
pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, 
the other much larger, nearly haK an inch long, and 
black, fiercely contending with one another. Having 
once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled 
and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I 
was surprised to find that the chips were covered with 
such combatants, that it was not a dnellum, but a beUum, 
a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted 
against the black, and frequently two red ones to one 
black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the 
hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was 
already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and 
black. It was the only battle which I have ever wit- 
nessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle 
was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the 
one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On 
every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet with- 
out any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never 



HENRY D. THOREAU 137 

fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast 
locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley 
amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till 
the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red 
champion had fastened himself like a vise to his adver- 
sary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field 
never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers 
near the root, having already caused the other to go by 
the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from 
side to side, and as I saw on looking nearer, had already 
divested him of several of his members. They fought 
with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither mani- 
fested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident 
that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. 

In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on 
the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, 
who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken 
part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none 
of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return 
with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some 
Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had 
now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw 
this unequal combat from afar — for the blacks were nearly 
twice the size of the red — he drew near with rapid pace 
till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the com- 
batants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon 
the black warrior, and commenced his operations near 
the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select 
among his own members; and so there were three united 
for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented 
which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should 
not have wondered by this time to find that they had 
their respective musical bands stationed on some emi- 
nent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to 
excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was 



138 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. 
The more you think of it, the less the difiference. And 
certainly there is not a fight recorded in Concord history, 
at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a mo- 
ment's comparison with this, whether for the nmnbers 
engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. 
For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dres- 
den. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, 
and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant 
was a Buttrick, — "Fire ! for God's sake, fire !" — and thou- 
sands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was 
not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a 
principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and 
not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the re- 
sults of this battle will be as important and memorable 
to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bun- 
ker Hill, at least. 

I took up the chip on which the three I have particu- 
larly described were struggling, carried it into my house, 
and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order 
to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first- 
mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously 
gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed 
his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, 
exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black 
warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for 
him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's 
eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. 
They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, 
and when I looked again the black soldier had severed 
the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living 
heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly 
trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly 
fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble 
struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant 



HENRY D. THOREAU 139 

of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to 
divest himself of them; which at length, after half an 
hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he 
went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. 
Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the 
remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do 
not know; but I thought that his industry would not be 
worth much thereafter. I never learned which party 
was victorious, nor the cause of the war: but I felt for 
the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited 
and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity 
and carnage, of a human battle before my door. 

Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have 
long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, 
though they say that Huber is the only modern author 
who appears to have witnessed them, "^neas Sylvius," 
say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of 
one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small 
species on the trunk of a pear-tree," adds that, "'This 
action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the 
Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an emi- 
nent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle 
with the greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement be- 
tween great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, 
in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have 
buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of 
their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event hap- 
pened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern 
the Second from Sweden," The battle which I witnessed 
took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before 
the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. 

Many a village Bose,* fit only to course a mud-turtle 

in a victualHng cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the 

woods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffec- 

* Bose, a nickname for a dog. i 



140 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

tually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; 
led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded 
the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its 
denizens; — now far behind his guide, barking like a 
canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed 
itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes 
with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of some 
stray member of the jerbilla* family. 

Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the 
stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far 
from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the 
most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, 
appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and 
stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than 
the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met a 
cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they 
all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely 
spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods 
there was what was called a "winged cat" in one of the 
farmhouses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian 
Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she 
was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am 
not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the 
more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that 
she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year 
before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; 
that,she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white 
spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy 
tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and 
flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve 
inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin 
like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like 
felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They 

* Jerbilla, or jerboa, a mouse or rat with a pouch; the kangaroo 
rat is an example. 



HENRY D. THOREAU 141 

gave me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There 
is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some 
thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other wild 
animal, which is not impossible, for, according to natural- 
ists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of 
the marten and domestic cat. This would have been the 
right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for 
why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his 
horse ? 

In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, 
to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring 
with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of 
his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, 
in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with 
patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They 
come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at 
least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on 
this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird 
cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up 
there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the 
leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no 
loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond 
with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their 
discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, 
taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must 
beat a retreat to town, and shop, and unfinished jobs. 
But they were too often successful. When I went to 
get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw 
this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. 
If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to 
see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be com- 
pletely lost, so that I did not discover him again, some- 
times, till the latter part of the day. But I was more 
than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went 
off in a rain. 



142 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm 
October afternoon, for such days especially they settle 
on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked 
in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out 
from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of 
me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pur- 
sued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up 
I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I mis- 
calculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty 
rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I 
had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed 
loud and long, and with more reason than before. He 
manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within 
half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the 
surface, turning his head this way and that, he coolly 
surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose 
his course so that he might come up where there was the 
widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from 
the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his 
mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at 
once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be 
driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his 
brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. 
It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of 
the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly yorn* adver- 
sary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the 
problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear 
again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on 
the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly 
under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweari- 
able, that when he had swum farthest he would immedi- 
ately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could 
divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth sur- 
face, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had 
time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its 



HENRY D. THOREAU 143 

deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in 
the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with 
hooks set for trout, — though Walden is deeper than that. 
How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly 
visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their 
schools ! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely 
under water as on the surface, and swam much faster 
there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached 
the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and in- 
stantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me 
to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to en- 
deavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and 
again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one 
way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh 
behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, 
did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up 
by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough 
betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I 
could commonly hear the plash of the water when he 
came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour 
he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam 
yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how 
serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came 
to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet 
beneath. 

His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet some- 
what like that of a water-fowl; but occasionallj', when 
he had balked me most successfully and come up a long 
way off, he muttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, prob- 
ably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a 
beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately 
howls. This was his looning, — perhaps the wildest sound 
that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and 
wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my ef- 
forts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky 



144 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 

was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that 
I could see where he broke the surface when I did not 
hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and 
the smoothness of the water were all against him. At 
length, having come up jfifty rods off, he uttered one of 
those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons 
to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the 
east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with 
misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer 
of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me, and 
so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous 
surface. 

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly 
tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from 
the sportsman — tricks which they will have less need to 
practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise 
they would sometimes circle round and round and over 
the pond at a considerable height, from which they could 
easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes 
in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither 
long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight 
of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left 
free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the 
middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its 
water for the same reason that I do. 



THE CHARACTER SKETCH 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

THE MAN IN BLACK 



Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) was one of the important 
men of letters of the eighteenth century, an associate of 
Addison, Steele, and Johnson. He was born in Ireland, 
the son of a poor country clergyman. He graduated at 
Dublin University at the foot of his class. This low rank 
was not due to any lack of ability, but rather to Gold- 
smith's happy-go-lucky nature. He wandered about 
Europe, supposed to be stud3dng medicine, but when he 
set up practice in London no patients came. Then he 
became a hack writer, producing books on whatever 
subjects the publishers desired. For a newspaper he 
wrote a series of essays called The Citizen of the World. He 
is best remembered as the author of the Vicar of Wake- 
field, a famous novel of rural life in England, and as the 
author of a comedy wliich yet holds the stage, She Stoops 
to Conquer, and of two poems, "The Traveller" and "The 
Deserted Village," which are in almost every collection of 
English poetry. 

The essay here printed is interesting not only in itself 
but from the fact that the character here sketched is a 
foreshadowing of the famous Doctor Primrose in the Vicar 
of Wakefield. The impulsive generosity of the Man in 
Black, his inconsistency, his heart quickly moved by dis- 
tress, — all these were characteristics of Goldsmith him- 
self. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

THE MAN IN BLACK 

(From The Citizen of the World) 

Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire an in- 
timacy only with a few. The Man in Black, whom I 
have often mentioned, is one whose friendship I could 
wish to acquire, because he possesses my esteem. His 
manners, it is true, are tinctured with some strange in- 
consistencies; and he may be justly termed an humorist 
in a nation of humorists. Though he is generous even 
to profusion, he affects to be thought a prodigy of parsi- 
mony and prudence; though his conversation be replete 
with the most sordid and selfish maxims, his heart is 
dilated with the most unbounded love. I have known 
him profess himself a man-hater, while his cheek was 
glowing with compassion; and, while his looks were sof- 
tened into pity, I have heard him use the language of the 
most unbounded ill-nature. Some affect humanity and 
tenderness, others boast of having such dispositions from 
Nature; but he is the only man I ever knew who seemed 
ashamed of his natural benevolence. He takes as much 
pains to hide his feelings, as any hypocrite would to con- 
ceal his indifference; but on every unguarded moment 
the mask drops off, and reveals him to the most super- 
ficial observer. 

In one of our late excursions into the country, happen- 
ing to discourse upon the provision that was made for 
the poor in England, he seemed amazed how any of his 
countrymen could be so foolishly weak as to relieve occa- 
sional objects of charity, when the laws had made such 

147 



148 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

ample provision for their support. "In every parish- 
house," says he, "the poor are supplied with food, clothes, 
fire, and a bed to lie on; they want no more, I desire no 
more myself; yet still they seem discontented. I'm sur- 
prised at the inactivity of our magistrates in not taking 
up such vagrants, who are only a weight upon the indus- 
trious; I'm surprised that the people are found to relieve 
them, when they must be at the same time sensible that 
it, in some measure, encourages idleness, extravagance, 
and imposture. Were I to advise any man for whom I 
had the least regard, I would caution him by all means 
not to be imposed upon by their false pretenses: let me 
assure you, sir, they are impostors, every one of them; 
and rather merit a prison than relief." 

He was proceeding in this strain earnestly, to dissuade 
me from an imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, 
when an old man, who still had about him the remnants 
of tattered finerj^ implored our compassion. He assured 
us that he was no common beggar, but forced into the 
shameful profession to support a dying wife and five 
hungrj'- children. Being prepossessed against such false- 
hoods, his story had not the least influence upon me; but 
it was quite otherwise with the Man in Black; I could see 
it visibly operate upon his countenance, and effectually in- 
terrupt his harangue. I could easily perceive that his 
heart burned to relieve the five starving children, but he 
seemed ashamed to discover his weakness to me. While 
he thus hesitated between compassion and pride, I pre- 
tended to look another way, and he seized this oppor- 
tunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of silver, 
bidding him at the same time, in order that I should hear, 
go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such 
impertinent falsehoods for the future. 

As he had fancied himself quite unperceived, he con- 
tinued, as we proceeded, to rail against beggars with as 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 149 

much animosity as before; he threw in some episodes on 
his own amazing prudence and economy, with his pro- 
found skill in discovering impostors; he explained the 
manner in which he would deal with beggars, were he a 
magistrate, hinted at enlarging some of the prisons for 
their reception, and told two stories of ladies that were 
robbed by beggarmen. He was beginning a third to the 
same purpose, when a sailor with a wooden leg once more 
crossed our walks, desiring our pity, and blessing oiu- 
limbs. I was for going on without taking any notice, 
but my friend, looking wistfully upon the poor petitioner, 
bade me stop, and he would show me with how much 
ease he could at any time detect an impostor. 

He now, therefore, assumed a look of importance, and 
in an angry tone began to examine the sailor, demanding 
in what engagement he was thus disabled and rendered 
unfit for ser-\ace. The sailor replied in a tone as angrily 
as he, that he had been an officer on board a private ship 
of war, and that he had lost his leg abroad in defense of 
those who did nothing at home. At his reply, all my 
friend's importance vanished in a moment; he had not a 
single question more to ask; he now only studied what 
method he should take to relieve him unobserved. He 
had, however, no easy part to act, as he was obliged to 
preserve the appearance of ill-nature before me, and yet 
relieve himself by relieving the sailor. Casting, there- 
fore, a furious look upon some bundles of chips which the 
fellow carried in a string at his back, my friend demanded 
how he sold his matches; but not waiting for a reply, de- 
sired in a surly tone to have a shilling's worth. The sailor 
seemed at first surprised at his demand, but soon recol- 
lecting himself, and presenting his whole bundle — "Here, 
master," says he, ''take all my cargo, and a blessing into 
the bargain." 

It is impossible to describe with what an air of triumph 



150 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

my friend marched off with his new purchase; he assured 
me that he was firmly of opinion that those fellows must 
have stolen their goods who could thus afford to sell 
them for half value. He informed me of several different 
uses to which those chips might be applied; he expatiated 
largely upon the savings that would result from lighting 
candles with a match instead of thrusting them into the 
fire. He averred that he would as soon have parted 
with a tooth as his money to those vagabonds, unless for 
some valuable consideration. I cannot tell how long this 
panegyric upon frugality and matches might have con- 
tinued, had not his attention been called off by another 
object more distressful than either of the former. A 
woman in rags, with one child in her arms, and another 
on her back, was attempting to sing ballads, but with 
such a mournful voice that it was difl&cult to determine 
whether she was singing or crying. A wretch who in 
the deepest distress still aimed at good-humor, was an 
object my friend was by no means capable of withstand- 
ing; his vivacity and his discourse were instantly inter- 
rupted; upon this occasion his very dissimulation had 
forsaken him. Even in my presence, he immediately ap- 
plied his hands to his pockets, in order to relieve her; but 
guess his confusion, when he found he had already given 
away all the money he carried about him to former ob- 
jects. The misery painted in the woman's visage was 
not half so strongly expressed as the agony in his. He 
continued to search for some time, but to no purpose, 
till, at length, recollecting himself, with a face of in- 
effable good-nature, as he had no money, he put into her 
hands his shilling's worth of matches. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 



The following essay, like the one on The Sea Fogs, 
is taken from The Silverado Squatters, the book which 
records the life of the Stevensons in the mountains of 
Cahfornia. His frail health made it necessary to have 
some assistance in their cabin, and to this fact we owe the 
minute portrayal of the two men, Irvine and Rufe. As 
Irvine loafed about, talking boastfully of his own achieve- 
ments, he little imagined that every attitude, every word, 
was being recorded upon a mind more sensitive than any 
photographic film, so that not only his image, but his very 
self would be set forth on paper, and he would be known 
to men in distant lands and other times. Such is the 
miracle wrought by literature. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 

(From The Silverado Squatters) 

There is quite a large race or class of people in America, 
for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in England. 
Of pure white blood, they are unknown or unrecognizable 
in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, 
quiet places of the country; rebelHous to all labor, and 
pettily thievish, like the English gypsies; rustically igno- 
rant, but with a touch of wood lore and the dexterity of 
the savage. Whence they came is a moot point. At 
the time of the war,* they poured north in crowds to 
escape the conscription; lived during summer on fruits, 
wild animals, and petty theft; and at the approach of 
winter, when these supplies failed, built great fires in the 
forest, and there died stoically by starvation. They are 
widely scattered, however, and easily recognized. Lout- 
ish, but not ill-looking, they will sit all day, swinging 
their legs on a field fence, the mind seemingly as devoid 
of all reflection as a Suffolk peasant's, careless of politics, 
for the most part incapable of reading, but with a rebel- 
lious vanity and a strong sense of independence. Hunt- 
ing is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion 
offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, 
following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and 
drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of 
those somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display 
activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye 
may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, 
Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, 

* The reference is to the Civil War. 
153 



154 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orrion, with the accent on 
the first. Whether they are indeed a race, or whether 
this is the form of degeneracy common to all backwoods- 
men, they are at least known by a generic byword, as 
Poor Whites or Lowdowners. 

I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor White, 
because the name savors of offense; but I may go as far 
as this — they were, in many points, not unsimilar to the 
people usually so called. Rufe himself combined two of 
the qualifications, for he was both a hunter and an 
amateur detective. It was he who pursued Russel and 
Dollar, the robbers of the Lakeport stage, and captured 
them the very morning after the exploit, while they were 
still sleeping in a hay-field. Russel, a drunken Scotch 
carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his own, and he 
expressed much grave commiseration for his fate. In all 
that he said and did, Rufe was grave. I never saw him 
hurried. When he spoke, he took out his pipe with cere- 
monial deliberation, looked east and west, and then, in 
quiet tones and few words, stated his business or told his 
story. His gait was to match; it would never have sur- 
prised you if, at any step, he had turned round and 
walked away again, so warily and slowly, and with so 
much seeming hesitation did he go about. He lay long 
in bed in the morning — rarely, indeed, rose before noon; 
he loved all games, from poker to clerical croquet, and in 
the Toil House croquet ground I have seen him toiling 
at the latter with the devotion of a curate. He took an 
interest in education, was an active member of the local 
school board, and when I was there, he had recently lost 
the schoolhouse key. His wagon was broken, but it 
never seemed to occur to him to mend it. Like all truly 
idle people, he had an artistic eye. He chose the print 
stuff for his wife's dresses, and counselled her in the 
making of a patchwork quilt, always, as she thought, 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 155 

wrongly, but to the more educated eye, always with 
bizarre and admirable taste — the taste of an Indian. 
With all this, he was a perfect, unoffending gentleman 
in word and act. Take his clay pipe from him, and he 
was fit for any society but that of fools. Quiet as he 
was, there burned a deep, permanent excitement in his 
dark blue ej'^es; and when this grave man smiled, it was 
like sunshine in a shady place. 

Mrs. Hanson {nee, if you please, Lovelands) was more 
commonplace than her lord. She was a comely woman, 
too, plump, fair-colored, with wonderful white teeth; and 
in her print dresses (chosen by Rufe) and with a large 
sunbonnet shading her valued complexion, made, I as- 
sure you, a very agreeable figure. But she was on the 
surface, what there was of her, outspoken and loud- 
spoken. Her noisy laughter had none of the charm of one 
of Hanson's rare, slow-spreading smiles; there was no 
reticence, no mystery, no manner about the woman; she 
was a first-class dairymaid, but her husband was an un- 
known quantity between the savage and the nobleman. 
She was often in and out with us, merry, and healthy, 
and fair; he came far seldomer — only, indeed, when there 
was business, or now and again, to pay a visit of cere- 
mony, brushed up for the occasion, with his wife on his 
arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth. These visits, in 
our forest state, had quite the air of an event, and turned 
our red canyon into a salon. 

Such was the pair who ruled in the old Silverado Hotel, 
among the windy trees, on the mountain shoulder over- 
looking the whole length of Napa Valley, as the man aloft 
looks down on the ship's deck. There they kept house, 
with sundry horses and fowls, and a family of sons, 
Daniel Webster, and I think George Washington, among 
the number. Nor did they want visitors. An old gentle- 
man, of singular stolidity, and called Breedlove — I think 



156 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

he had crossed the plains in the same caravan with Rufe 
— housed with them for a while during our stay; and they 
had besides a permanent lodger, in the form of Mrs. 
Hanson's brother, Irvine Lovelands. I spell Irvine by 
guess; for I could get no information on the subject, just 
as I could never find out, in spite of many inquiries, 
whether or not Rufe was a contraction for Rufus. They 
were all cheerfully at sea about their names in that gen- 
eration. And this is surely the more notable where the 
names are all so strange, and even the family names 
appear to have been coined. At one time, at least, the 
ancestors of all these Alvins and Alvas, Loveinas, Love- 
lands, and Breedloves, must have taken serious counsel 
and found a certain poetry in these denominations; that 
must have been, then, their form of literature. But 
stiU times change; and their next descendants, the George 
Washingtons and Daniel Websters, will at least be clear 
upon the point. And anyway, and however his name 
should be spelled, this Irvine Lovelands was the most un- 
mitigated Caliban I ever knew. 

Our very first morning at Silverado, when we were full 
of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds 
and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, 
Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she 
for neighborliness and general curiosity; he, because he 
was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I 
forget >how much a day. The way that he set about 
cutting wood was characteristic. We were at that mo- 
ment patching up and unpacking in the kitchen. Down 
he sat on one side, and down sat his sister on the other. 
Both were chewing pine-tree gum, and he, to my annoy- 
ance, accompanied that simple pleasure with profuse ex- 
pectoration. She rattled away, talking up hill and down 
dale, laughing, tossing her head, showing her brilliant 
teeth. He looked on in silence, now spitting heavily on 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 157 

the floor, now putting his head back and uttering a loud, 
discordant, joyless laugh. He had a tangle of shock hair, 
the color of wool; his mouth was a grin; although as strong 
as a horse, he looked neither heavy nor yet adroit, only 
leggy, coltish, and in the road. But it was plain he was 
in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying his visit; and he 
laughed frankly whenever we failed to accomplish what 
we were about. This was scarcely helpful: it was even, 
to amateur carpenters, embarrassing; but it lasted until 
we knocked off work and began to get dinner. Then 
Mrs. Hanson remembered she should have been gone an 
hour ago; and the pair retired, and the lady's laughter 
died away among the nutmegs down the path. That 
was Irvine's first day's work in my employment — the 
devil take him ! 

The next morning he returned and, as he was this time 
alone, he bestowed his conversation upon us with great 
liberality. He prided himself on his intelligence; asked 
us if we knew the schoolma'am. He didn't think much 
of her, anyway. He had tried her, he had. He had put 
a question to her. If a tree a hundred feet high were to 
fall a foot a day, how long would it take to fall right 
down? She had not been able to solve the problem. 
"She don't know nothing," he opined. He told us how 
a friend of his kept a school with a revolver, and chuckled 
mightily over that; his friend could teach school, he could. 
All the time he kept chewing gum and spitting. He 
would stand a while looking down; and then he would 
toss back his shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, and spit, 
and bring forward a new subject. A man, he told us, 
who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his dog. 
"That was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn't it? 
It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But I got even with 
him: I pisoned his dog." His clumsy utterance, his rude 
embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity 



158 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

of his remarks. I do not think I ever appreciated the 
meaning of two words until I knew Irvine — the verb, 
loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his 
portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself 
against the wall, and grin, and be more in everybody's 
way than any other two people that I ever set my ej^es 
on. Nothing that he did became him; and yet you were 
conscious that he was one of your own race, that his mind 
was cimibrously at work, revolving the problem of exist- 
ence like the quid of gum, and in his own cloudy manner 
enjoying life, and passing judgment on his fellows. Above 
all things, he was delighted with himself. You would 
not have thought it, from his uneasy manners and troubled, 
struggling utterance; but he loved himself to the marrow, 
and was happy and proud like a peacock on a rail. 

His self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his harness. 
He could be got to work, and even kept at work, by flat- 
tery. As long as my wife stood over him, crying out how 
strong he was, so long exactly he would stick to the matter 
in hand; and the moment she turned her back, or ceased 
to praise him, he would stop. His physical strength was 
wonderful; and to have a woman stand by and admire his 
achievements, warmed his heart like sunshine. Yet he 
was as cowardly as he was powerful, and felt no shame 
in owning to the weakness. Something was once wanted 
from the crazy platform over the shaft, and he at once 
refused to venture there — "did not like," as he said, 
"foolen' round them kind o' places," and let my wife 
go instead of him, looking on with a grin. Vanity, where 
it rules, is usually more heroic: but Irvine steadily ap- 
proved himself, and expected others to approve him; 
rather looked down upon my wife, and decidedly expected 
her to look up to him, on the strength of his superior 
prudence. 

Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was per- 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 159 

haps this, that Irvine was as beautiful as a statue. His 
features were, in themselves, perfect; it was only his 
cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that disfigured 
them. So much strength residing in so spare a frame 
was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He 
must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack 
Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be cer- 
tain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of 
his mind no less than by the vigor of his body, that he 
broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, 
turning the very obstacles to service. Irvine, in the same 
case, would have sat down and spat, and grumbled curses. 
He had the soul of a fat sheep, but, regarded as an artist's 
model, the exterior of a Greek god. It was a cruel 
thought to persons less favored in their birth, that this 
creature, endowed — to use the language of theatres — 
with extraordinary "means," should so manage to mis- 
employ them that he looked ugly and almost deformed. 
It was only by an effort of abstraction, and after many 
days, that you discovered what he was. 

By playing on the oaf's conceit, and standing closely 
over him, we got a path made round the corner of the 
dump to our door, so that we could come and go with 
decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that 
there were boulders to be plucked up bodity, bushes to 
be uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display: 
but cutting wood was a different matter. Anybody could 
cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of supervising 
him, and had other things to attend to. And, in short, 
days went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked and 
lounged and spat; but the firewood remained intact as 
sleepers on the platform or growing trees upon the moun- 
tainside. Irvine as a wood-cutter, we could tolerate; 
but Irvine as a friend of the family, at so much a day, 
was too bald an imposition, and at length, on the after- 



160 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

noon of the fourth or fifth day of our connection, I ex- 
plained to him, as clearly as I could, the light in which I 
had grown to regard his presence. I pointed out to him 
that I could not continue to give him a salary for spitting 
on the floor; and this expression, which came after a good 
many others, at last penetrated his obdurate wits. He 
rose at once, and said if that was the way he was going 
to be spoke to, he reckoned he would quit. And, no one 
interposing, he departed. 

So far, so good. But we had no firewood. The next 
afternoon, I strolled down to Rufe's and consulted him 
on the subject. It was a very droll interview, in the 
large, bare north room of the Silverado Hotel, Mrs. Han- 
son's patchwork on a frame, and Rufe, and his wife, and 
I, and the oaf himself, all more or less embarrassed. 
Rufe announced there was nobody in the neighborhood 
but Irvine who could do a day's work for anybody. 
Irvine, thereupon, refused to have any more to do with 
my service; he "wouldn't work no more for a man as had 
spoke to him 's I had done." I found myself on the 
point of the last humiliation — driven to beseech the 
creature whom I had just dismissed with insult: but I 
took the high hand in despair, said there must be no 
talk of Irvine coming back unless matters were to be 
differently managed; that I would rather chop firewood 
for myself than be fooled; and, in short, the Hansons 
being eager for the lad's hire, I so imposed upon them 
with merely affected resolution, that they ended by beg- 
ging me to re-employ him again on a solemn promise that 
he should be more industrious. The promise, I am bound 
to say, was kept. We soon had a fine pile of firewood at 
our door; and if Caliban gave me the cold shoulder and 
spared me his conversation, I thought none the worse of 
him for that, nor did I find my days much longer for the 
deprivation. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 161 

The leading spirit of the family was, I am inclined to 
fancy, Mrs. Hanson. Her social brilliancy somewhat 
dazzled the others, and she had more of the small change 
of sense. It was she who faced Kelmar, for instance; 
and perhaps, if she had been alone, Kelmar would have 
had no rule within her doors. Rufe, to be sure, had a 
fine, sober, open-air attitude of mind, seeing the world 
without exaggeration — perhaps, we may even say, with- 
out enough; for he lacked, along with the others, that 
commercial idealism which puts so high a value on time 
and money. Sanity itself is a kind of convention. Per- 
haps Rufe was wrong; but, looldng on life plainly, he was 
unable to perceive that croquet or poker were in any 
way less important than, for instance, mending his wagon. 
Even his own profession, hunting, was dear to him mainly 
as a sort of play; even that he would have neglected, had 
it not appealed to his imagination. His hunting-suit, for 
instance, had cost I should be afraid to say how many 
bucks — the currency in which he paid his way: it was 
all befringed, after the Indian fashion, and it was dear 
to his heart. The pictorial side of his daily business 
was never forgotten. He was even anxious to stand for 
his picture in those buckskin hunting clothes; and I re- 
member how he once warmed almost into enthusiasm, 
his dark blue eyes growing perceptibly larger, as he 
planned the composition in which he should appear, 
"with the horns of some real big bucks, and dogs, and a 
camp on a crick" (creek, stream). 

There was fit) trace in Irvine of this woodland poetry. 
He did not care for hunting, nor yet for buckskin suits. 
He had never observed scenery. The world, as it ap- 
peared to him, was almost obKterated bj^ his own great 
grinning figure in the foreground : Caliban Malvolio. And 
it seems to me as if, in the persons of these brothers-in- 
law, we had the two sides of rusticity fairly well rep- 



162 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

resented: the hunter living really in nature; the clod- 
hopper living merely out of society: the one bent up in 
every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at 
least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly 
alive to all that touches it; the other in the inert and 
bestial state, walking in a faint dream, and taking so 
dim an impression of the myriad sides of life that he is 
truly conscious of nothing but himself. It is only in 
the fastnesses of nature, forests, mountains, and the 
back of man's beyond, that a creature endowed with five 
senses can grow up into the perfection of this crass and 
earthy vanity. In towns or the busier country sides, 
he is roughly reminded of other men's existence; and if 
he learns no more, he learns at least to fear contempt. 
But Irvine had come scathless through life, conscious 
only of himself, of his great strength and intelligence; 
and in the silence of the universe, to which he did not 
listen, dwelling with delight on the sound of his own 
thoughts. 



JULIAN STREET 

THE SPIRIT OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Julian Street (1879 ) an American journalist of 

to-day, was born in Chicago, and received his education 
in the public schools of that city and at Ridley College. 
He entered journalism, becoming a reporter on the New 
York Mail (then the Mail and Express), in 1899, and was 
for a time dramatic editor. He has been a frequent 
contributor to magazines, and has published a number of 
books, of which the best known are a humorous story, 
The Need of Change, some sketches of travel called Abroad 
at Home and American Adventures, also a recent book on 
Mysterious Japan. 

His work as a writer of magazine articles brought him 
into relations with Theodore Roosevelt, and, like many 
other journalists, he became a warm admirer of the^Colo- 
nel. In 1915 he pubUshed a sketch of Roosevelt with 
the title The Most Interesting American. In this he pointed 
out the fact that Theodore Roosevelt combined within 
himself men of many types: he was a physical-culture ex- 
pert, a historian, a biographer, an essayist, a natural scien- 
tist, a big-game hunter, an explorer and discoverer, a 
critic, a former cowboy, the holder of a dozen LL.D.'s, 
an editor, a former member of the State legislature, a prac- 
tical reformer, a veteran colonel of cavalry, a former As- 
sistant Secretary of the Navy, a former governor, a Nobel 
prize winner, a former Vice-president and former Presi- 
dent — the youngest who ever held that position. On the 
death of Theodore Roosevelt, Mr, Street wrote the fine 
tribute here printed; it appeared first in Collier^ s, and is 
now published as part of the volume, The Most Interest- 
ing American. 



JULIAN STREET 

THE SPIRIT OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT* 

(From The Most Interesting American) 

We, whom Theodore Roosevelt used proudly and affec- 
tionately to call his "fellow Americans," have always 
listened with great relish to characteristic stories of him. 
His qualities, physical and spiritual, were so utterly his 
own, his individuality so intense and overmastering, that 
he seemed somehow to be projected among us, to be in- 
timately known even to those of us who had never touched 
his hand or even seen him. It was this curious feeling 
as of personal acquaintance with him that caused us so 
to delight in the flavor of a typical Roosevelt story. 

"Isn't that just Hke him !" we would say, as we might 
of a story hitting off familiar traits of our own father. 

But whereas, on the night of January 5, 1919, a Roose- 
velt story might by many of us have been regarded merely 
as something entertaining, the next morning witnessed a 
great change. The wand of Death touching him as he 
slept, releasing him to further high adventure, to great, 
final explorations, transformed not him alone, but the 
environment and the legend of him. To every posses- 
sion of his, from the wife and children he loved to such 
small objects as that inkstand, made from an elephant's 
foot, which stood upon his desk at Sagamore Hill, or the 
very pens and pencils there, thenceforth attached a quite 
new sacredness. And so, for us, his fellow Americans, 

* Copyright, Collier's, February 1, 1919; also Century Co., 1920. 
Reprinted by permission of the author and of the publishers. 

165 



166 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

new sacredness attaches now to the rich legacy of wisdom 
he has left us, to every thought of his that we can learn, 
to every belief he held, and consequently to every au- 
thentic story that can in any way contribute to our 
knowledge of him. 

In the vast amount of matter that has been printed of 
the Colonel I do not recall having seen any reference to a 
certain theory that he had (and, having it, of course he 
put it into practice) in connection with the bringing up 
of children. It was a characteristic theory, and now it, 
like all else, takes on a new significance. 

As long since as when he was Governor of New York 
it was his practice to go every Saturday afternoon for a 
tramp in the country with Mrs. Roosevelt and the chil- 
dren. And it was understood between them that in the 
course of all such tramps he would lead them to some 
physical obstacle which must be overcome. Sometimes 
it would be merely the obstacle of long distance over a 
difficult terrain, calling for sustained effort in face of 
great fatigue; sometimes it would be a wide brook to be 
crossed at a difficult place; sometimes a deep ravine full 
of tangled underbrush to be traversed; and on one mem- 
orable occasion, less than a fortnight before the Colonel 
was nominated for Vice-President — that nomination de- 
signed by political enemies within his own party to ter- 
minate his political career — there was a steep cliff of 
crumbling slate to be ascended and descended. 

The idea that Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt attempted 
to fasten in the children's minds was that life frequently 
presents obstacles comparable with those encountered on 
these walks, and that it is the part of good manhood and 
good womanhood squarely to meet and surmount them, 
going through or over, but never around. Thus early the 
Roosevelt children, whose later record has been so worthy 
of their father and their mother, had begun to learn pri- 



JULIAN STREET 167 

mary lessons in resourcefulness, perseverance, courage, 
stoicism, and disregard for danger — for sometimes, as in 
the Adventure of the Slate Cliff, there was danger. 

The bank, soft and almost perpendicular, at first ap- 
peared insurmountable, but after an hour and a half all 
but one of that day's walking party had managed to 
climb up and down again. The exception was Alice 
Roosevelt, then a girl of sixteen, who, having reached 
the top, found herself unable to descend. 

On this day Elon Hooker, an old friend of the Roose- 
velts, was with them. Walking along the base of the 
cliff, this young man found a stout tree growing up be- 
side it. Climbing the tree, he leaned out and, seizing 
with one hand a hummock of slate at the crest of the 
little precipice, offered his arm as a bridge over which 
Alice could step into the tree, whence it would be no 
very difficult matter to climb down to earth. 

The hummock was less secure than it appeared. As 
she stepped upon his arm the slate to which he was hold- 
ing broke away and his arm fell beneath her. She had, 
however, managed to grasp with one hand a branch, and 
to this she clung until he succeeded in catching her and 
drawing her safely into the tree. 

On reaching the ground they discovered that the fallen 
mass of slate had struck the Colonel fairly on the head, 
laying open his scalp from the forehead to a corresponding 
point at the back of the skull. Though the wound bled 
freely, they were immediately reassured by his smile. 
Finding a brook, they washed the gash as best they 
could; later a surgeon took a dozen stitches in the 
Colonel's scalp; and when, some ten days after, he at- 
tended the Republican National Convention he was none 
the worse for the accident. Few persons, indeed, knew 
of it at all, for it was characteristic of him to avoid any 
mention of his injuries or ailments, and if forced to men- 



168 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

tion them he would invariably pass them off as being of 
no consequence. 

Thus, for example, when it became known a twelve- 
month or so ago that he had been for many years stone 
blind in the left eye, as the result of a blow received in 
boxing, the news came as a surprise to numerous friends 
who knew him well. Yet he had been blind in that eye 
when he shot lions in Africa. He was not in the least 
sensitive about his blindness, nor do I think he tried par- 
ticularly to conceal it. It was simply that he had an 
aversion, resembling that of the aboriginal American, for 
the discussion of bodily ills; a contempt for the incon- 
venience or suffering resulting from them. And still, 
when others suffered physically or spiritually, he was the 
most solicitous, the gentlest, the tenderest of men. 

It was like him, too, that throughout the afternoon 
on which he went to the hospital for a grave operation, 
a year before his death, he continued to dictate letters to 
his secretary, and that while dictating he had a hemor- 
rhage and fainted three times, only to revive and resume 
his dictation. And until the doctor forbade it, he even 
contemplated going that night to a dinner at which he 
had agreed to speak. 

On his hunting trips, when travelling, and more latelj^ 
when confined to his bed in the hospital, he utilized every 
moment of his time for work, study, and reflection; he 
would concentrate upon a book or a conversation while 
enduring pain to a degree that would have rendered it 
impossible for most men to think consecutively, let alone 
converse upon important topics with a succession of 
visitors. 

He was afraid neither to live nor to die. And in the 
purely orthodox sense he had no cause to fear death, for 
his soul was as clean as that of a little child. The ulti- 
mate biographer of Roosevelt will not have so much as 



JULIAN STREET 169 

one single item to gloss over or conceal. And I am not 
sure that that is not the finest thing that may be said 
of any man. 

Until a year ago I never heard him speak of death, 
but since then I have known him to speak of it more 
than once. I am wondering now if it merely happened 
so, or whether, as he lay there in the hospital a year ago, 
and again in the last months of the year just past, 
he may not have had a premonition that the end was 
perhaps nearer than those about him supposed. Cer- 
tainly he knew a year ago, at the time of the operation 
for an abscess in the middle ear, which rapidly extended 
to the inner ear, that he was at death's door. Dr. Arthur 
B. Duel, his surgeon, told him so, and the Colonel promptly 
expressed a brave resignation. 

I saw him in the hospital a few days after the opera- 
tion. He was reading a book. After we had spoken a 
few words he said: 

''Lying here, I have often thought how glad I would 
be to go now if by doing so I could only bring the boys 
back safe to Mrs. Roosevelt." 

One day at luncheon last April, when we all thought 
him as vigorous as ever, he spoke again of his boys, and 
there was in what he said as much apprehension for them 
as he ever allowed himself to show — or perhaps I should 
say as much apprehension of the blow that the loss of 
any one of them would be to the remainder of the family. 

"Mrs. Roosevelt has been perfectly wonderful," he 
said, "about their going to fight. We both realize that 
we have a very full, interesting, satisfying life to look 
back upon. Whatever may come now, we have had 
more than thirty j^ears of happiness together, with all 
our children spared to us." 

And again, less than a month ago, as I write, when I 
called at the hospital, Mrs. Roosevelt — who always stayed 



170 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

there with him — spoke in the same terms, though in the 
interim the blow had fallen. It was of Quentin, the 
eagle, that she spoke. 

"We have been until now a singularly united family," 
she said. "This is the first loss from our immediate 
circle. Life has been kind to us. We have much to be 
thankful for." 

The story I have told of his walks with the children 
and the obstacles over which he led them was, until the 
morning of January 6, only a typical Roosevelt story. 
Since then it has become an allegory. For his feeling for 
us all was in a very fine sense paternal. He was the 
father; we the children. "Face the obstacles," he always 
urged us. "Go through or over; never around." 

Or to quote his own words, uttered in that great speech 
twenty years ago: 

"/ preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country 
calls not for the life of ease, hut for the life of strenuous en- 
deavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the 
fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely 
swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from 
the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives 
and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and 
stronger people will pass by us and will win for themselves 
the domination of the world. 

" Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to 
do our duty well and manfully ; resolute to uphold righteous- 
ness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and 
brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. 
Above all, let us not shrink from strife, moral or physical, 
within or without the Nation, provided we are certain the 
strife is justified ; for it is only through strife, through hard 
and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the 
goal of true national greatness." 

That, I believe, was the essence of Roosevelt's per- 



JULIAN STREET 171 

sonal and national philosophy. Simply he thought and 
spoke and lived and died. And that, without exception, 
has been true of all our greatest men. Like Lincoln and 
Franklin, he was one of us. When he spoke we under- 
stood him. He never juggled thoughts or words to baffle 
us, confuse us, stupefy us with the brilliancy of his per- 
formance. Nor did he ever speak or write to mask a 
purpose, or a lack of purpose. He never thought, as he 
tried to set down his ideas: "Now I am writing something 
that will live. Now I am making history." He was im- 
patient of such notions, just as he was impatient of the 
applause that interrupted him when he was making pub- 
lic speeches. Time and again I have seen him hold up 
his hand to stop applause. He wanted to go on. It was 
the thing to be accomplished that obsessed him. 

Thinking of the ingratitude that we have sometimes 
shown him, and of the follies we have committed, on oc- 
casion, in face of his exhortation to be brave and prompt 
and ready, I once asked him how he had kept from be- 
coming cynical about mankind. 

"I am not cynical," he said, "because I have observed 
that just when our people seem to be becoming altogether 
hopeless they have a way of suddenly turning around and 
doing something perfectly magnificent." 

What a prophecy that was ! — for he said it in the hour 
of our national shame, when we were crying gratefully: 
"He kept us out of war !" 

Well may we be thankful that Roosevelt lived to see 
his profound faith in us justified; to see us at last take up 
arms in answer to his repeated call; to see us quit "the 
life of ease" for that of "strenuous endeavor"; to see us 
spurn "ignoble peace" and enter the "hard contest where 
men must win at hazard of their lives." That the poison 
of pacifism did not ruin the nation is due to the fact that 
we had Roosevelt as an antitoxin. 



172 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 

Thus his greatest single service to his country was 
performed, not while he was President, but in the last 
years of his life; not while he held the reins of government, 
but as a private citizen whose unofficial power lay solely 
in the nation's admiration for him; its faith in him and 
in his vision; its heed to what he said. 

There will, of course, be a memorial to Roosevelt. It 
will be a noble thing of marble. But such a thing, how- 
ever glorious, will mean much more to us than it could 
mean to him. We shall erect it to give ourselves the 
mournful satisfaction of doing our dead hero honor. But 
let us not forget, meanwhile, that the one memorial he 
would have wished cannot be built of tangible materials, 
but must be made of thoughts and deeds. 

He has taken his last tramp with his own children, and 
with us. He has guided them, and us, up to the last ob- 
stacle we were destined to meet and overcome under his 
leadership. And the one thing he would ask of us is 
this: That we go on without him. That we learn the 
simple lessons he has taught by precept and example. 
That we be foresighted, prompt, practical, honest, reso- 
lute, courageous. 

So, in ourselves, we will make his spirit live. 



TEE CRITICAL ESSAY 



JOHN RUSKIN 

WHAT AND HOW TO READ 



A sketch of Ruskin's life is given on page 104. On 
one side he was an artist, on the other side a reformer. 
Even when he writes about books, he does not aim to lead 
us upon pleasant literary rambles, but tells us plainly 
that we are reading the wrong books, and reading them 
the wrong way. This is not very complimentary, it is 
true; if you are looking for compliments, if you are afraid 
of criticism, do not read Ruskin. But if you are willing 
to face honest criticism, if you have the mental vigor to 
follow a great thinker, then Ruskin has a message for you. 
In another essay, Ruskin says: "No book is worth any- 
thing which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable un- 
til it has been read and re-read and loved and loved again, 
and every passage marked, so that you can refer to the 
passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon 
he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice 
she needs from her store." As you read the following 
essay, decide what passages you would mark in this way. 



JOHN RUSKIN 

WHAT AND HOW TO READ 

(From Sesa77ie and Lilies, Lecture I) 

I want to speak to you about books; and about the 
way we read them, and could, or should read them. A 
grave subject, you will say; and a wide one ! Yes; so 
wide that I shall make no effort to touch the compass 
of it. I will try only to bring before you a few simple 
thoughts about reading, which press themselves upon me 
every day more deeply, as I watch the course of the 
public mind with respect to our daily enlarging means of 
education, and ^the answeringly wider-spreading, on the 
levels, of the irrigation of literature. It happens that I 
have practically some connection with schools for different 
classes of youth; and I receive many letters from parents 
respecting the education of their children. In the mass 
of these letters, I am always struck by the precedence 
which the idea of a "position in life" takes above all 
other thoughts in the parents' — more especially in the 
mothers' — minds. . . . 

Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the 
first — at least that which is confessed with the greatest 
frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to 
youthful exertion — is this of "advancement in life." My 
main purpose this evening is to determine, with you, 
what this idea practically includes, and what it should 
include. 

You will grant that moderately honest men desire 
place and oflSce, at least in some measure, for the sake of 

175 



176 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

their beneficent power; and would wish to associate rather 
with sensible and well-informed persons than with fools 
and ignorant persons, whether they are seen in the com- 
pany of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without 
being troubled by repetition of any common truisms about 
the preciousness of friends, and the influence of com- 
panions, you will admit, doubtless, that according to the 
sincerity of our desire that our friends may be true, and 
our companions wise, — and in proportion to the earnest- 
ness and discretion with which we choose both, will be 
the general chances of our happiness and usefulness. 

But, granting that we had both the will and the sense 
to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ! 
or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice I 
Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or 
necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We 
cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, 
we cannot have at our side when we most need them. 
All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those 
beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, 
by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and 
hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man 
of science, and be answered good-humoredly. We may 
intrude ten minutes* talk on a cabinet minister, answered 
probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive; 
or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of 
throwing a bouquet in the path of a Princess, or arrest- 
ing the kind glance of a Queen. And yet these momen- 
tary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, 
and powers in pursuit of little more than these; while, 
meantime, there is a society continually open to us, of 
people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever 
our rank or occupation; — talk to us in the best words 
they can choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. 
And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle. 



JOHN RUSKIN 177 

— and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not to 
grant audience, but to gain it; — kings and statesmen 
lingering patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow 
anterooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account 
of that company, — perhaps never listen to a word they 
would say, all day long ! 

You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
that the apathy with which we regard this company of 
the noble, who are praying us to listen to them, and the 
passion with which we pursue the company, probably of 
the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach 
us, are grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of 
the living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, 
with which we desire to become familiar. But it is not 
so. Suppose you never were to see their faces; — suppose 
you could be put behind a screen in the statesman's 
cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be glad 
to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to 
advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is 
only a little less, folded in two, instead of four, and you 
can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that 
bind a book, and listen, all day long, not to the casual 
talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses 
of the wisest of men; — this station of audience, and hon- 
orable privy council, you despise! 

But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 
people talk of things that are passing, and are of im- 
mediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. 
Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people will them- 
selves tell you about passing matters, much better in 
their writings than in their careless talk. But I admit 
that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer 
those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring 
writings — books, properly so called. For all books are 
divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the 



178 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is not one 
of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does 
not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction 
of species. There are good books for the hour, and good 
ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones 
for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go 
farther. 

The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak of 
the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 
Bome person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you 
need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; 
good-humored and witty discussions of questions; lively 
or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact- 
telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of 
passing history; — all these books of the hour, multiply- 
ing among us as education becomes more general, are a 
peculiar characteristic and possession of the present age; 
we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely 
ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. 
But we make the worst possible use, if we allow them to 
usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they 
are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in 
good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or 
necessary, to-day; whether worth keeping or not, is to be 
considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at 
breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. 
So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which 
gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, 
and weather last year at such a place, or which tells you 
that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of 
such and such events, however valuable for occasional 
reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a 
"book" at all, nor, in the real sense, to be "read." 

A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written 



JOHN RUSKIN 179 

thing; and written, not with the view of mere communi- 
cation, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed 
only because its author cannot speak to thousands of 
people at once; if he could, he would — the volume is 
mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your 
friend in India; if you could, you would; you write in- 
stead: that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is 
written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it 
merely, but to preserve it. The author has something 
to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or help- 
fully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said 
it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound 
to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at 
all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the 
thing, or group of things, manifest to him; — this the 
piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sun- 
shine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would 
fain set it down forever; engrave it on rock, if he could; 
saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and 
drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life 
was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew; 
this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That 
is his "writing"; it is, in his small human way, and with 
whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscrip- 
tion, or scripture. That is a "Book." 

Perhaps you think no books were ever so written? 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
or at all in kindness? or do you think there is never any 
honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I 
hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever 
bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 
done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. It is mixed 
always with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, affected 
work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover 
the true bits, and those are the book. 

Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 



180 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

by their greatest men; — by great leaders, great states- 
men, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; 
and life is short. You have heard as much before; — yet 
Jiave you measured and mapped out this short life and 
its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that 
you cannot read that — that what you lose to-day you 
cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with 
your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk 
with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is 
with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to 
respect that you jostle with the common crowd for entree 
here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal 
court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, 
multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of 
every place and time? Into that you may enter always; 
in that you may take fellowship and rank according to 
your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never 
be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of 
companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy wall 
be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive 
to take high place in the society of the living, measured, 
as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the 
place you desire to take in this company of the dead. 

"The place you desire," and the place you ^i yourself 
for, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the 
past differs from all living aristocracy in this: — it is open 
to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth 
wiU Bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the 
guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no 
vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres 
of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief 
question, "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you 
ask to be the companion of nobles ? Make yourself noble, 
and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the 
wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. 



JOHN RUSKIN 181 

But on other terms? — No. If you will not rise to us, we 
cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assiune cour- 
tesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you 
with considerable pain; but here we neither feign nor in- 
terpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you 
would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if 
you would recognize our presence." 

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it 
is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you 
are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. 
They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and 
show your love in these two following ways. 

I. First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to 
enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; 
not to find your own expressed by them. If the person 
who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not 
read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in 
many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is 
— that's exactly what I think I" But the right feeling is, 
"How strange that is! I never thought of that before, 
and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, 
some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at 
least be sure that you go to the author to get at his mean- 
ing, not to find yours. Judge it afterward, if you think 
yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be 
sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you will 
not get at his meaning all at once; — nay, that at his whole 
meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. 
Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong 
words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more 
strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in 
order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite 
see the reason of this, nor analyze that cruel reticence in 
the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide 



182 THE CRITICAL E^SAY 

their deeper thought. They do not give it to you by 
way of help, but of reward, and will make themselves sure 
that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. 
But it is the same with the physical type of wisdom, gold. 
There seems, to you and me, no reason why the electric 
forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of 
gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings 
and people might know that all the gold they could get 
was there; and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, 
or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as 
much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it 
so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody 
knows where: you may dig long and find none; you must 
dig painfully to find any. 

And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When 
you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, "Am 
I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are 
my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good 
trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my 
breath good, and my temper?" And, keeping the figure 
a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a 
thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of 
being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the 
rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at 
it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learn- 
ing; your smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful soul. 
Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning without 
those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, 
finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can 
gather one grain of the metal. 

And, therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and 
authoritatively, (I know I am right in this,) you must get 
into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring 
yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay let- 
ter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the 



JOHN RUSKIN 183 

opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in 
functions of signs, that the study of books is called "litera- 
ture," and that a man versed in it is called, by the con- 
sent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man of books, 
or of words, you may yet connect with that accidental 
nomenclature this real principle; — that you might read 
all the books in the British Museum (if you could live 
long enough), and remain an utterly "illiterate," unedu- 
cated person; but that if you read ten pages of a good 
book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real accuracy, 
— you are for evermore in some measure an educated 
person. The entire difference between education and 
non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of 
it), consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentleman 
may not know many languages, — may not be able to 
speak any but his own, — may have read very few books. 
But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; 
whatever word he pronounces he pronounces rightly; 
above all, he is learned in the 'peerage of words; knows the 
words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from 
words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry 
— their intermarriages, distantest relationships, and the 
extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, 
among the national noblesse of words at any time, and in 
any country. . . . 

Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
habit you must form. Nearly every word in your lan- 
guage has been first a word of some other language — of 
Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of 
eastern and primitive dialects). And many words have 
been all these; — that is to say, have been Greek first, 
Latin next, French or German next, and English last; 
undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the lips 
of each nation; but retaining a deep vital meaning which 
all good scholars feel in employing them, even at this day. 



184 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young 
or old — girl or boy — whoever you may be, if you think of 
reading seriously (which, of course, implies that you have 
some leisure at command), learn your Greek alphabet; 
then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and 
whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down 
patiently. Read Max Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to 
begin with; and, after that, never let a word escape you 
that looks suspicious. It is severe work; but you will 
find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly 
amusing. And the general gain to your character, in 
power and precision, will be quite incalculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, 
Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to 
learn any language perfectly. But you can easily as- 
certain the meanings through which the English word 
has passed; and those which in a good writer's work it 
must still bear. 

And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with your 
permission, read a few lines of a true book with j'^ou, 
carefully; and see what will come out of them. I will 
take a book perfectly known to you all; no English words 
are more familiar to us, yet nothing perhaps has been 
less read with sincerity. I will take these few following 
lines of "Lycidas": 

" Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! 
Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest; 



JOHN RUSKIN 185 

Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 

A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 

That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; 

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 

Grate on their scrannel pipes of A^Tetched straw; 

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 

But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; 

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 

Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. 
Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very 
types of it which Protestants usually refuse most pas- 
sionately? His ''mitred" locks ! Milton was no Bishop- 
lover; how comes St. Peter to be "mitred"? "Two 
massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the 
ke3^s claimed by the Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowl- 
edged here by Milton only in a poetical license for the 
sake of its picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam 
of the golden keys to help his effect? Do not think it. 
Great men do not play stage tricks with doctrines of life 
and death: only little men do that. Milton means what 
he says; and means it with his might too — is going to 
put the whole strength of his spirit presently into the 
saying of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he 
was a lover of true ones; and the Lake-pilot is here, in 
his thoughts, the type and head of true episcopal power. 
For Milton reads that text, "I will give unto thee the 
keys of the kingdom of Heaven" quite honestly. Puritan 
though he be, he would not blot it out of the book be- 
cause there have been bad bishops; nay, in order to 
understand him, we must understand that verse first; it 
will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under our 
breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is 



186 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind 
by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to 
reason on it if we go on a little farther, and come back 
to it. For clearly, this marked insistence on the power 
of the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily 
what is to be charged against the false claimants of epis- 
copate; or generally, against false claimants of power and 
rank in the body of the clergy; they who, "for their bellies' 
sake, creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." 

Do not think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the 
three; specially those three, and no more than those — 
"creep," and "intrude," and "climb"; no other words 
would or could serve the turn, and no more could be 
added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three 
classes, correspondent to the three characters, of men 
who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those 
who "creep" into the fold; who do not care for office, nor 
name, but for secret influence, and do all things occultly 
and cunningly, consenting to any servility of office or con- 
duct, so only that they may intimately discern, and un- 
awares direct, the minds of men. Then those who "in- 
trude" (thrust, that is) themselves into the fold, who 
by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of 
tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion, obtain 
hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, 
those who "climb," who by labor and learning, both 
stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their 
own ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and 
become "lords over the heritage," though not "ensamples 
to the flock." 

Now go on: — 

"Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast; 
Blind mouths — " 



JOHN RUSKIN 187 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression; a broken 
metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. 

Not so: its very audacity and pithiness are intended to 
make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those 
two monosyllables express the precisely accurate con- 
traries of right character, in the two great offices of the 
Church — those of bishop and pastor. 

A Bishop means a person who sees. 

A Pastor means one who feeds. 

The most unbishoply character a man can have is 
therefore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to 
be fed, — to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind 
mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a 
little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen 
from bishops desiring power more than light. They want 
authority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not 
to rule; though it may be vigorously to exhort and re- 
buke; it is the king's office to rule; the bishop's office is 
to oversee the flock; to number it, sheep by sheep; to be 
ready always to give full account of it. Now it is clear 
he cannot give account of the souls, if he has not so much 
as numbered the bodies of his flock. The first thing, 
therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put him- 
self in a position in which, at any moment, he can ob- 
tain the history from childhood of every living soul in 
his diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back 
street. Bill and Nancy, knocking each other's teeth out! 
— Does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye 
upon them? Has he had his eye upon them? Can he 
circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit 
of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is 
no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury 
steeple; he is no bishop — he has sought to be at the helm 



188 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

instead of the masthead; he has no sight of things. 
"Nay," you say, it is not his duty to look after Bill in 
the back street. What! the fat sheep that have full 
fleeces — you think it is only those he should look after, 
while (go back to your Milton) "the hungry sheep look 
up, and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with 
privy paw" (bishops knowing nothing about it) "daily 
devours apace, and nothing said"? 

"But that's not our idea of a bishop." Perhaps not; 
but it was St. Paul's; and it was Milton's. They may be 
right, or we may be; but we must not think we are read- 
ing either one or the other by putting our meaning into 
their words. 

I go on. 

"But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the poor are 
not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; 
they have spiritual food." 

And Milton says, "They have no such thing as spiri- 
tual food; they are only swollen with wind," At first 
you may think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. 
But again, it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up 
your Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the mean- 
ing of "Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin 
word "breath," and an indistinct translation of the 
Greek word for "wind." The same word is used in writ- 
ing, "The wind bloweth where it listeth"; and in writing, 
"So is every one that is born of the Spirit"; born of the 
breath, that is; for it means the breath of God, in soul 
and body. We have the true sense of it in our words 
"inspiration" and "expire." Now, there are two kinds 
of breath with which the flock may be filled; God's breath, 
and man's. The breath of God is health, and life, and 
peace to them, as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the 



JOHN RUSKIN 189 

hills; but man's breath — the word which he calls spiritual, 
— is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. 
They rot inwardly with it; they are puffed up by it, as a 
dead body by the vapors of its own decomposition. This 
is literally true of all false religious teaching; the first and 
last, and fatalest sign of it is that ''puffing up." Your 
converted children, who teach their parents; your con- 
verted convicts, who teach honest men; your converted 
dunces, who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half 
their lives, suddenly awakening to the fact of there being 
a God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people 
and messengers; your sectarians of every species, small 
and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high church or low, 
in so far as they think themselves exclusively in the 
right and others wrong; and pre-eminently, in every sect, 
those who hold that men can be saved by thinking rightly 
instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and wish 
instead of work: — these are the true fog-children — clouds, 
these, without water; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor 
and skin, without blood or flesh: blown bagpipes for the 
fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and corrupting, — ''Swollen 
with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power 
of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the 
difference between Milton and Dante in their interpreta- 
tion of this power: for once, the latter is weaker in thought; 
he supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven; 
one is of gold, the other of silver: they are given by St. 
Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is not easy to deter- 
mine the meaning either of the substances of the three 
steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes 
one, of gold, the key of heaven; the other, of iron, the key 
of the prison, in which the wicked teachers are to be 
bound who "have taken away the key of knowledge, yet 
entered not in themselves." 



190 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are 
to see, and feed; and, of all who do so, it is said, "He 
that watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the 
reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be 
withered himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself be 
shut out of sight, — shut into the perpetual prison-house. 
And that prison opens here, as well as hereafter: he who 
is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. 
That command to the strong angels, of which the rock- 
apostle is the image, "Take him, and bind him hand and 
foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against the 
teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth 
refused, and for every falsehood enforced; so that he is 
more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther 
outcast, as he more and more misleads, till at last the 
bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as "the golden 
opes, the iron shuts amain." 

We have got something out of the lines, I think, and 
much more is yet to be found in them; but we have done 
enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word 
examination of your author which is rightly called "read- 
ing"; watching every accent and expression, and putting 
ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our 
own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to 
be able assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not 
"Thus I thought, in mis-reading Milton." 



THOMAS B. MACAULAY 

BUNYAN'S ''PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 



Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was one of 
the eminent writers of the Victorian age. He was educated 
at Cambridge University, where he was distinguished 
as a debater, and famous for his abihty to remember 
everything that he read, often in the exact words of the 
book. To the Edinburgh Review he contributed a num- 
ber of essays on historical and Hterary topics. He served 
several terms in Parliament, had a seat in the Cabinet, 
and went to India as a member of the Supreme Council. 
He wrote a History of England that was so popular that 
its sales exceeded those of the novels of the time. He 
also wrote some stirring ballads called the Lays of Ancient 
Rome, and contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
articles upon Samuel Johnson, Bunyan, and Goldsmith. 

Macaulay had the power to make his readers see the 
persons and scenes he described. His marvellous memory 
enabled him, as in this essay, to bring in a mass of details. 
Yet he never lets the detail become confusing; he carries 
us along as over a well-marked road, we know where we 
are, and he knows exactly where he is taking us. His 
style is always clear; he is fond of using balanced sentences 
and sharp antitheses; his statements are always positive; 
when he makes a general statement he usually follows 
it by a concrete example. All these characteristics are 
seen in the essay on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. It 
was first published in the Edinburgh Review for December, 
1832. 



THOIVIAS B. MACAULAY 

BUNYAN'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS"* 

(From Macaulay's Literary Essays) 

This is an eminently beautiful and splendid edition of 
a book which well deserves all that the printer and the 
engraver can do for it. The Life of Bunyan is, of course, 
not a performance which can add much to the literary 
reputation of such a writer as Mr. Southey. But it is 
written in excellent English, and, for the most part, in 
an excellent spirit. Mr. Southey propounds, we need 
not say, many opinions from which we altogether dissent; 
and his attempts to excuse the odious persecution to 
which Bunyan was subjected have sometimes moved our 
indignation. But we will avoid this topic. We are at 
present much more inclined to join in paying homage to 
the genius of a great man than to engage in a controversy 
concerning Church government and toleration. 

We must not pass without notice the engravings with 
which this volume is decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's 
woodcuts are admirably designed and executed. Mr. 
Martin's illustrations do not please us quite so well. His 
Valley of the Shadow of Death is not that Valley of the 
Shadow of Death which Bunyan imagined. At all 
events, it is not that dark and horrible glen which has 
from childhood been in our mind's eye. The valley is a 
cavern: the quagmire is a lake: the straight path runs 
zigzag: and Christian appears like a speck in the dark- 
ness of the immense vault. We miss, too, those hideous 

* The Pilgrim's Progress, with a Life of John Bunyan. By Robert 
Southey, Esq., LL.D., Poet-Laureate. Illustrated with Engrav- 
ings. 8vo. London: 1830. 

193 



194 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

forms which make so striking a part of the description 
of Bunj'^an, and which Salvator Rosa would have loved 
to draw. 

The characteristic peculiarity of the Pilgrim's Progress 
is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a 
strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the 
fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many 
thousands with tears. There are some good allegories 
in Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit by 
Addison. In these performances there is, perhaps, as 
much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim'' s Progress. But 
the pleasure which is produced by the Vision of Mirza,* 
the Vision of Theodore, the Genealogy of Wit, or the Con- 
test between Rest and Labor, is exactly similar to the 
pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's odes or 
from a canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which be- 
longs wholly to the understanding, and in which the 
feelings have no part whatever. Nay, even Spenser 
himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that 
ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make 
allegor}'- interesting. It was in vain that he lavished the 
riches of his mind on the House of Pride and the House 
of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of 
tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We 
become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly Sins, and long 
for the society of plain men and women. Of the per- 
sons who read the first canto, not one in ten reaches the 
end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perse- 
veres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary 
are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. 
If the last six books, which are said to have been destroyed 
in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any 
heart less stout than that of a commentator would have 
held out to the end. 

* This and the following are titles of Addison's Spectator papers. 



THOMAS B. MACAULAY 195 

It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That won- 
derful book, while it obtains admiration from the most 
fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to 
admire it. Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were desul- 
tory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, 
made an exception in favor of the Pilgrim's Progress. 
That work, he said, was one of the two or three works 
which he wished longer. It was by no common merit 
that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from 
the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. 
In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is 
the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pil- 
grim's Progress is a greater favorite than JacJc the Giant- 
killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path 
as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backwar 1 
and forward a hundred times. This is the highest mir- 
acle of genius, — that things which are not should be as 
though they were, — that the imaginations of one mind 
should become the personal recollections of another. 
And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no 
ascent, no declivity, no resting place, no turnstile, with 
which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, 
and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City 
of Destruction, the long line of road, as straight as a rule 
can make it, the Interpreter's house and all its fair shows, 
the prisoner in the iron cage, the palace, at the doors of 
which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of 
which walked persons clothed all in gold, the cross and 
the sepulchre, the steep hill and the pleasant arbor, the 
stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside, the 
low green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and cov- 
ered with flocks, all are as well known to us as the sights 
of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place 
where Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of 
the way, to stop the journey of Christian, and where 



196 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

afterward the pillar was set up to testify how bravely 
the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, 
the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of 
the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. 
The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clank- 
ing of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, 
are heard through the darkness. The way, hardly dis- 
cernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth of the burning 
pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and 
its hideous shapes, to terrify the adventurer. Thence he 
goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled 
bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by 
his side. At the end of the long dark valley he passes 
the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones 
of those whom they had slain. 

Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, 
till at length the towers of a distant city appear before 
the traveller; and soon he is in the midst of the innumer- 
able multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers 
and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There 
are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and 
British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and 
loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth. 

Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver-mine, 
and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that 
pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit- 
trees. On the left branches off the path leading to the 
horrible castle, the courtyard of which is paved with the 
skulls of pilgrims; and right onward are the sheepfolds 
and orchards of the Delectable Mountains. 

From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through 
the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here 
and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green 
arbor. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the 
flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, 



THOMAS B. MACAULAY 197 

and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are 
plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, 
on the other side of that black and cold river over which 
there is no bridge. 

All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross 
or overtake the pilgrims, giants and hobgoblins, ill- 
favored ones and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy 
Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her 
fingers playing with the money, the black man in the 
bright vesture, Mr. Worldly Wiseman and my Lord 
Hategood, Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous, all are 
actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers 
through their allegorical progress with interest not in- 
ferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia 
to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. 
Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the 
abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of 
many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. 
We have not an Othello, but jealousj^, not an lago, but 
perfidy, not a Brutus, but patriotism. The mind of 
Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that personi- 
fications, when he dealt with them, became men. A 
dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more 
dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human 
beings in most plays. 

The Pilgrim's Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect 
allegory. The types are often inconsistent with each 
other; and sometimes the allegorical disguise is altogether 
thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic of 
death; and we are told that every human being must pass 
through the river. But Faithful does not pass through 
it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at 
Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's 
birthright and about his own convictions of sin as Bun- 
yan might have talked with one of his own congregation. 



198 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

The damsels at the House Beautiful catechise Christi- 
ana's boys, as any good ladies might catechise any boys 
at a Sunday-school. But we do not believe that any 
man, whatever might be his genius, and whatever his 
good luck, could long continue a figurative history with- 
out falling into many inconsistencies. We are sure that 
inconsistencies, scarcely less gross than the worst into 
which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortest 
and most elaborate allegories of the Spectator and the 
Rambler. The Tale of a Tub * and the History of John 
Bull swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can 
be properly applied to that which is unavoidable. It is 
not easy to make a simile go on all fours. But we be- 
lieve that no human ingenuity could produce such a 
centipede as a long allegory in which the correspondence 
between the outward sign and the thing signified should 
be exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, ancient or 
modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The best thing, 
on the whole, that an allegorist can do, is to present to 
his readers a succession of analogies, each of which may 
separately be striking and happy, without looking very 
nicely to see whether they harmonize with each other. 
This Bunyan has done; and, though a minute scrutiny 
may detect inconsistencies in every page of his tale, the 
general effect which the tale produces on all persons, 
learned and unlearned, proves that he has done well. 
The passages which it is most difl&cult to defend are those 
in which he altogether drops the allegory, and puts into 
the mouth of his pilgrims religious ejaculations and dis- 
quisitions better suited to his own pulpit at Bedford or 
Reading than to the Enchanted Ground or the Inter- 
preter's Garden. Yet even these passages, though we 
will not undertake to defend them against the objections 

* The Tale of a Tub is by Jonathan Swift; the History of John 
Bull hy John Arbuthnot. Both are prose allegories. 



THOMAS B. MACAULAY 199 

of critics, we feel that we could ill spare. We feel that 
the story owes much of its charm to these occasional 
glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not 
be hidden, which force themselves through the veil, and 
appear before us in their native aspect. The effect is 
not unlike that which is said to have been produced on 
the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen 
flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression 
to what would else have been an inanimate and uninter- 
esting disguise. 

It is very amusing and very instructive to compare 
the Pilgrim's Progress with the Grace Abounding. The 
latter work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces 
of autobiography in the world. It is a full and open con- 
fession of the fancies which passed through the mind of 
an illiterate man, whose affections were warm, whose 
nerves were irritable, whose imagination was ungoverna- 
ble, and who was under the influence of the strongest 
religious excitement. In whatever age Bunyan had lived, 
the history of his feelings would, in all probability, have 
been very curious. But the time in which his lot was cast 
was the time of a great stirring of the human mind. A 
tremendous burst of public feeling, produced by the 
t3Tanny of the hierarchy, menaced the old ecclesiastical 
institutions with destruction. To the gloomy regularity 
of one intolerant Church had succeeded the license of in- 
numerable sects, drunk with the sweet and heady must 
of their new liberty. Fanaticism, engendered by perse- 
cution and destined to engender persecution in turn, 
spread rapidly through society. Even the strongest and 
most commanding minds were not proof against this 
strange taint. Any time might have produced George 
Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone belong 
the frantic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, and the 
hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell. 



200 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excita- 
ble mind in an age of excitement. By most of his bi- 
ographers he has been treated with gross injustice. They 
have understood in a popular sense all those strong terms 
of self-condemnation which he employed in a theological 
sense. They have, therefore, represented him as an 
abandoned wretch, reclaimed by means almost mirac- 
ulous; or, to use their favorite metaphor, "as a brand 
plucked from the burning." Mr. Ivimey calls him the 
depraved Bunyan, and the wicked tinker of Elstow. 
Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to have been too familiar with 
the bitter accusations which the most pious people are in 
the habit of bringing against themselves, to understand 
literally all the strong expressions which are to be found 
in the Grace Abounding. It is quite clear, as Mr. Southey 
most justly remarks, that Bunyan never was a vicious 
man. He married very early; and he solemnly declares 
that he was strictly faithful to his wife. He does not 
appear to have been a drunkard. He owns, indeed, that 
when a boy he never spoke without an oath. But a 
single admonition cured him of this bad habit for life; 
and the cure must have been wrought early; for at eigh- 
teen he was in the army of the Parliament; and, if he had 
carried the vice of profaneness into that service, he would 
doubtless have received something more than an admoni- 
tion from Sergeant Bind-their-kings-in-chains, or Captain 
Hew -Agag- in -pieces- before -the-Lord. Bell-ringing, and 
playing at hockey on Sundays, seem to have been the 
worst vices of this depraved tinker. They would have 
passed for virtues with Archbishop Laud. It is quite clear 
that, from a very early age, Bunyan v/as a man of a strict 
life and of a tender conscience. "He had been," says 
Mr. Southey, "a blackguard." Even this we think too 
hard a censure. Bunyan was not, we admit, so fine a 
gentleman as Lord Digby; but he was a blackguard no 



THOMAS B. MACAULAY 201 

otherwise than as every tinker that ever lived has been 
a blackguard. Indeed, Mr. Southey acknowledges this. 
"Such he might have been expected to be by his birth, 
breeding, and vocation. Scarcely, indeed, by possibility, 
could he have been otherwise." A man whose manners 
and sentiments are decidedly below those of his class 
deserves to be called a blackguard. But it is surely un- 
fair to apply so strong a word of reproach to one who is 
only what the great mass of every community must in- 
evitably be. 

Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has 
described with so much power of language prove, not that 
he was a worse man than his neighbors, but that his mind 
was constantly occupied by religious considerations, that 
his fervor exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagina- 
tion exercised despotic power over his body and mind. 
He heard voices from heaven. He saw strange visions of 
distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable 
Mountains. From those abodes he was shut out, and 
placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wan- 
dered through ice and snow, striving to make his way 
into the happy region of light. At one time he was seized 
with an inclination to work miracles. At another time 
he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. He 
could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. He felt his 
infernal enemy pulling at his clothes behind him. He 
spurned with his feet and struck with his hands at the 
destroyer. Sometimes he was tempted to sell his part 
in the salvation of mankind. Sometimes a violent im- 
pulse urged him to start up from his food, to fall on his 
knees, and to break forth into prayer. At length he 
fancied that he had committed the unpardonable sin. 
His agony convulsed his robust frame. It was, he says, 
as if his breast-bone would split; and this he took for a 
sign that he was destined to burst asunder like Judas. 



202 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

The agitation of his nerves made all his movements 
tremulous; and this trembling, he supposed, was a visible 
mark of his reprobation, like that which had been set 
on Cain, At one time, indeed, an encouraging voice 
seemed to rush in at the window, like the noise of wind, 
but very pleasant, and commanded, as he says, a great 
calm in his soul. At another time a word of comfort 
"was spoke loud unto him; it showed a great word; it 
seemed to be writ in great letters." But these intervals 
of ease were short. His state, during two years and a 
half, was generally the most horrible that the human 
mind can imagine. "I walked," says he, with his own 
peculiar eloquence, "to a neighboring town; and sat 
down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep 
pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought 
me to; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head; but 
methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens 
did grudge to give me light; and as if the very stones in 
the street, and the tiles upon the houses, did band them- 
selves against me. Methought that they all combined 
together to banish me out of the world. I was abhorred 
of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had 
sinned against the Saviour. Oh, how happy now was 
every creature over I ! for they stood fast, and kept their 
station. But I was gone and lost." Scarcely any mad- 
house could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or 
of miserj^ so acute. 

rt was through this valley of the Shadow of Death, 
overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding 
with blasphemy and lamentation, and passing amidst 
quagmires, snares, and pitfalls, close- by the very mouth 
of hell, that Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruit- 
ful land of Beulah, in which he sojourned during the 
latter period of his pilgrimage. The only trace which his 
cruel sufferings and temptations seem to have left behind 



THOiNIAS B. MACAULAY 203 

them was an affectionate compassion for those who were 
still in the state in which he had once been. Religion 
has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in 
his allegory. The feeling which predominates through 
the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, timid, 
and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing, of 
Mr. Feeblemind, of Mr. Despondency and his daughter 
Miss Muchafraid, the account of poor Littlefaith who was 
robbed by the three thieves of his spending monej'^, the 
description of Christian's terror in the dungeons of Giant 
Despair and in his passage through the river, all clearly 
show how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own 
mind had become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted 
with religious melancholy. 

Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, ad- 
mits that, if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appear- 
ance than in Bunyan's works, it would never have 
become a term of reproach. In fact, those works of 
Bunyan with which we are acquainted are by no means 
more Calvinistic than the articles and homilies of the 
Church of England. The moderation of his opinions on 
the subject of predestination gave offense to some zealous 
persons. We have seen an absurd allegory, the heroine 
of which is named Hephzibah, written by some raving 
supralapsarian* preacher who was dissatisfied with the 
mild theology of the Pilgrim's Progress. In this foolish 
book, if we recollect rightly, the Interpreter is called the 
Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. 
Mr. Southey tells us that the Catholics had also their 
Pilgrini's Progress, without a Giant Pope, in which the 
Interpreter is the Director, and the House Beautiful 
Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof of the 

* Supralapsarian, a theological term signifying one who believes 
that before men were created, God had determined which ones were 
to be saved and which were to be damned. 



204 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

pm\^er of Bunyan's genius, that two religious parties, 
both of which regarded his opinions as heterodox, should 
have had recourse to him for assistance. 

There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the 
Pilgrim'' s Progress, which can be fully comprehended and 
enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the 
times through which Bunyan lived. The character of 
Mr. Greatheart, the guide, is an example. His fighting 
is, of course, allegorical; but the allegory is not strictly 
preserved. He delivers a sermon on imputed righteous- 
ness to his companions; and, soon after, he gives battle 
to Giant Grim, who had taken upon him to back the lions. 
He expounds the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the 
household and guests of Gains; and then he sallies out to 
attack Slaygood, who was of the nature of flesh-eaters, 
in his den. These are inconsistencies; but they are in- 
consistencies which add, we think, to the interest of the 
narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan 
had in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and 
Worcester, who prayed with his men before he drilled 
them, who knew the spiritual state of every dragoon in 
his troop, and who, with the praises of God in his mouth, 
and a two-edged sword in his hand, had turned to flight, 
on many fields of battle, the swearing, drunken bravoes 
of Rupert and Lunsford. 

Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the 
middle of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific 
of such men. Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was 
aimed at some particular individual; and this seems by 
no means improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have 
known many of those hypocrites who followed religion 
only when religion walked in silver slippers, when the 
sun shone, and when the people applauded. Indeed, he 
might have easily found all the kindred of By-ends among 
the public men of his time. He might have found among 
the peers my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, 



THOMAS B. MACAULAY 205 

and my Lord Fair-speech; in the House of Commons, 
Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Any-thing, and Mr. Facing-both- 
ways; nor would "the parson of the parish, Mr. Two- 
tongues," have been wanting. The town of Bedford 
probably contained more than one politician who, after 
contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during 
the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had 
got by persecuting the saints dm-ing the reign of the 
strumpets, and more than one priest who, during repeated 
changes in the discipline and doctrines of the church, had 
remained constant to nothing but his benefice. 

One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim's 
Progress is that in which the proceedings against Faith- 
ful are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan 
intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were 
conducted under Charles the Second. The license given 
to the witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless par- 
tiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipi- 
tancy and the blind rancor of the jury, remind us of those 
odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the 
Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, 
drawing, and quartering. Lord Hategood performs the 
office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs him- 
self could have performed it. 

"Judge. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast 
thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed 
against thee? 

"Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own 
defense ? 

"Judge. Sirrah, sirrah! thou deservest to live no 
longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, 
that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear 
what thou, vile runagate, hast to say." 

No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss 
for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the 
baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times "sinned 



206 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

up to it still," and even went beyond it. The imaginary 
trial of Faithful, before a jury composed of personified 
vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the 
real trial of Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the 
vices sat in the person of Jefferies. 

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and 
invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to ob- 
tain a wide command over the English language. The 
vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. 
There is not an expression, if we except a few technical 
terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. 
We have observed several pages which do not contain a 
single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer 
has said more exactly what he meant to say. For mag- 
nificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle 
disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, 
and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain 
working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book 
in our literature on which we would so readily stake the 
fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book 
which shows so well how rich that language is in its own 
proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by 
all that it has borrowed. 

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not 
name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a 
sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord 
Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke 
of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be 
compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the 
preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are 
not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever 
men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth 
century, there were only two great creative minds. One 
of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the 
Pilgrim's Progress. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 

WELLS'S -OUTLINE OF HISTORY" 



J. Salwyn Schapiro (1879 ) is assistant professor 

of History in the College of the City of New York. He 
received his early education in the public schools of 
Hudson, New York, and his collegiate training at the 
College of the City of New York and at Columbia Uni- 
versity, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
from Columbia in 1909. He is the author of Social Re- 
form and the Reformation and Modern and Contemporary 
European History. 

The review here given appeared originally in the New 
York Nation. It is longer than most reviews, partly 
because of the importance of the book to be discussed, 
partly because of the method of treatment adopted by 
the reviewer. The article has three main divisions: 
(a) a general discussion of the subject of history, with 
reference to Mr. Wells; (6) a summary of the Outline of 
History, with comment; (c) an estimate of Mr. Wells's 
whole literary product, for the purpose of pointing out 
features which are common to all his writings. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 



H. G. WELLS'S "OUTLINE OF HISTORY" 

(This article appeared in The Nation for February 3, 1921. It 
is reprinted by permisgion of the author and of the editor of The 
Nation.) 



In The Outline of History Mr. Wells has performed at 
least one remarkable feat: he has interested the average 
intelligent reader in history. No professional historian 
now living has ever done it or could do it. The average 
intelligent person will read fiction, essays, philosophy, 
science, and sometimes even poetry; but he will not read 
history. And the reason for this is obvious. History 
has recently been written for one of two audiences. One 
of these audiences consists of students in school and col- 
lege to whom history is presented as an endless and tire- 
some succession of dates, battles, political parties, the 
"heroic dead," politicians, kings, and generals. Exami- 
nations once over, these students promptly proceed to 
forget all about it. But the memory of horrors associated 
with studying history lingers, and in after-life nothing 
will induce them to open a book on this subject. Or 
history has been written by the Ph. Deified for the Ph. 
Deified, generally in a language unknown to living men. 
When an ordinary person happens across a volume of 
this type and begins reading it, he is at first mystified, 
then dismayed, and ends by giving the book as a gift to 
a deserving nephew. Now and then a Macaulay, a 
Green, a Michelet, a Treitschke, a Mommsen, a Ban- 
croft comes along and writes a history so vivid, so full 

209 



210 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

of the life and color that characterize man even at his 
lowest and stupidest that the reader overcomes his 
antipathy for the subject and pursues it with avidity. 

Mr. Wells, by profession a novelist and by tempera- 
ment a reformer, has now essayed the task. In spite of 
the fact that he is not a member of the guild of historians 
and has therefore received no training in what is termed 
scientific history, he is nevertheless in manj'- ways re- 
markably well qualified for it. In the first place, he has 
a strong, subtle, and profound sense of human relation- 
ships. Few men of our day have so keen a realization 
of the forces in life that make or mar individuals and so- 
cieties. In the second place, Mr. Wells possesses un- 
usual powers of imagination, an essential gift in one who 
essays to write history, for it takes imagination to see 
reality. The unimaginative see only forms, appearances, 
and semblances, never reality. Finally, Mr. Wells can 
write superlatively well. A reader can rest assured as 
he takes up these two rather large volumes that they will 
hold his attention throughout. 

To Mr. Wells, as to many other thoughtful men, the 
World War and the class wars that followed in its wake 
revealed a civilization sick unto death. A true lover of 
mankind, he was moved to inquire into the origin of the 
dreadful disease that brought about the world tragedy. 
He came to the conclusion that the trouble lay primarily 
in the fact that history has been the handmaid of narrow 
nationalisms, religious bigotry, stupid racialism, and cul- 
tural arrogance that fostered suspicions and bred hatreds; 
and that ''there can be no common peace and prosperity 
without common historical ideas." Thereupon Mr. 
Wells determined to become the propagandist for man- 
kind by writing a universal history from the time, about 
half a million years ago, when the earth was a flaring 
mass of matter without life, to the present day. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 2U 

The Outline is a history with a new point of view, Mr. 
Wells's own. Briefly, it is this: All mankind has a com- 
mon origin and heritage, has travelled along a common 
path, and is nearing a common goal. Being conscious 
of this, it has tried "to create and develop a common 
consciousness and a common stock of knowledge which 
may serve and illuminate that purpose." History in this 
sense becomes "the common adventure of all mankind" 
in search of social and international peace through a 
mitigation of the rights and privileges of nations and of 
property. Mr. Wells's history "deals with ages, and 
races, and nations where the ordinary history deals with 
reigns and pedigrees and campaigns." No people, no 
religion, no country, no period, is overlooked. The Out- 
line is in spirit and in fact a universal history. It con- 
cerns itself with Asia and Africa no less than with Europe 
and America; with Buddhism and Mohammedanism no 
less than with Judaism and Christianity; with primitive 
life no less than with modern; with Hindus, Chinese, 
Persians, and Egyptians no less than with Englishmen, 
Frenchmen, and Germans. 

According to Mr. Wells there have been three struc- 
tural ideas in the life of mankind on which the great 
society of the future will be built: (1) science, first identi- 
fied with Herodotus and Aristotle; (2) a universal God of 
righteousness, the contribution of the Semites; and (3) 
a system of world polity, first suggested by the empire of 
Alexander the Great. Mr. Wells has envisaged the path 
of civilization. Civilization arose as a "communitj^ of 
obedience," subject to priests, lords, and kings, and has 
progressed toward a "community of will," self -determin- 
ing, democratic, free. The American Revolution, he de- 
clares, was the first great positive and successful step 
toward the foundation of a "community of will," for it 
repudiated the ancient forms of authority, king, priest, 



212 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

and lord. The great repudiation was of course the 
French Revolution. 

So gigantic a task as Mr. Wells set before himself would 
require the industry of a Ranke, the versatility of a 
Leonardo da Vinci, the learning of a Mommsen, and the 
style of a Macaulay; in short, universal genius of the 
highest order. Mr. Wells, having a sense of humor, 
knows his limitations. He has modestly avowed them 
and has sought advice and assistance from many experts 
in various fields, the chief being Mr. Ernest Barker, Sir 
E. Ray Lankester, and Professor Gilbert Murray. The 
Outline is profusely illustrated with interesting and orig- 
inal maps, diagrams, and drawings by Mr. J. F. Horra- 
bin. One of the unusual features of the book is the 
heckling, in true English fashion, of the text by the 
foot-notes. It is the tradition for foot-notes to murmur 
approval to whatever the text is pleased to say; in this 
history they shout defiance at the text. Mr. Wells's 
advisers, who wrote and signed most of the foot-notes, 
use this method of disagreeing with him. Sometimes he 
descends to the foot-notes to engage in a bout with his 
critics. All this is quite diverting and gay, and for once 
the reader will enjoy reading foot-notes. 

The Outline contains nothing original except the point 
of view and method of treatment. Mr. Wells does not 
claim to have discovered new material or to have dis- 
credited old material. Everything in his book is acces- 
sible elsewhere. Universal histories, too, are not new; 
they were the fashion in the eighteenth century and even 
earlier. But his is the first book, and, so far as I know, 
the only one, that is a universal history with a distinctly 
modern point of view and that has utilized and has brought 
to bear upon its thesis the accumulated riches of modern 
scholarship in the related sciences of geology, biology, 
archaeology, ethnology, sociology, comparative religions, 
economics, and political science. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 213 

At this point it is important to inquire on what basis 
Mr. Wells solved the problem of selection. Every writer 
of history is confronted with this vexing problem. What 
shall he select from the enormous mass of material that 
constitutes human history? What shall be excluded? 
What shall be emphasized? What shall be minimized? 
The manner in which historians react to these problems 
varies with their point of view, their traditions, their 
education, their milieu* their temperament, and espe- 
cially with the spirit of the age in which they live. Every 
age rewrites history to suit itself, because interpretation 
of history changes with increase of knowledge and with a 
better understanding of that curious being called Man. 
We of to-day understand the ancient Greeks far better 
than did Pericles because we know more of human psy- 
chology than he did. In a sense the historian may be 
considered a social psychoanalyst, for he brings to the 
surface the unconscious motives and forces that have 
caused profound changes in human affairs. Those who 
write history with the view to merely explaining the past 
are not historians but antiquarians. A true historian 
studies the past with a view primarily to explaining the 
present, and not infrequently does he use the present to 
throw light on the past. Now, what was Mr. Wells's 
basis of selection? In his case the question is all the 
more important because he had to encompass half a mil- 
lion years of world history in two volumes. His answer 
is in itself no small contribution. His purpose is to in- 
clude and to emphasize only those events in the past 
that have a bearing on the future. Readers of Mr. 
Wells's books know that, in his great quest to fathom the 
mystery of life, his eyes have always been turned toward 
the future. He never tires of reiterating the sentiment 
that the chief business of mankind ought to be to prepare 
* Milieu, environment, the conditions which surround one. 



214 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

I 

itself, its ideals, and its institutions for the great future 
that is approaching. This point of view animates and 
distinguishes the Outline. 

The book possesses another unique quality, its inti- 
macy. Mr. Wells is the one writer of history who takes 
the reader into his confidence and discusses with him 
frankly the significance of the great events of the past. 
History as seen through the temperament of Mr. Wells 
is novel, piquant, and entertaining. In reading the Out- 
line one seldom gets the idea that what is narrated oc- 
curred far away and long ago. Mr. Wells has no sense 
of time, for he discusses events in the remote past as if 
they were still happening. All ages are contemporary 
with Mr. Wells. This gives vividness to his story and 
truthfulness, too; for let it not be forgotten that the dead 
we have always with us. 

II 

Book I tells the story of the origin of the world. In a 
style so simple and lucid that a child can understand it, 
he describes the Record of the Rocks, the changes of 
climate, the formation of the earth's smface, the first 
appearance of life, the origin of species, and finally the 
Age of Mammals. Mr. Wells's early scientific training 
has stood him in good stead. He has evidently read 
widely and deeply in this field, for he moves easily among 
his materials. The reader is held in breathless suspense 
as the thrilling tale is told of thousands of years of which 
the record, though so slight, is yet so significant. 

Book II is, if anything, still more fascinating. It 
alone is worth the price of the two volumes. It tells the 
story of the origin and development of the human race, 
from our ape-like ancestor through the Heidelberg, Pilt- 
down, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon types to present 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 215 

man. Mr. Wells possesses a scientific imagination of a 
high order. He reconstructs in a marvellous way the 
Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages with their inhabitants, 
tools, architecture, and art. He then tells of the origin 
of races, of agriculture, of herding, and of trade. Finally 
he reconstructs the mind of primitive man, and describes 
the origin of thought, of symbols, of legends, of reHgion, 
and of the various languages. 

Book in, on the Dawn of History, keeps up the pace. 
It deals with the first civilizations, Sumerian, Assyrian, 
Chaldean, Egyptian, Hindu, and Chinese; with the mari- 
time and trading people of the ^Egean, the Cretans, Tro- 
jans, Phoenicians, and Homeric Greeks. There is a 
short but remarkably clear chapter on the origin and 
importance of writing. Mr. Wells traces writing through 
the picture, the syllable, and finally to the alphabet stage. 
With the coming of the written word, ''verbal tradition 
which had hitherto changed from age to age, began to be 
fixed. Men separated by hundreds of irdles could now 
communicate their thoughts. An increasing number of 
human beings began to share a common written knowl- 
edge and a common sense of a past and a future. Human 
thinking became a larger operation in which hundreds 
of minds in different places and different ages could react 
upon each other." 

How the priest and king came into history is the next 
theme. There is a bare suggestion that the forerunner 
of both was the Paleolithic Old Man of the Tribe, dreaded 
not only in life as the master but dreaded as well after 
death, so that his spirit had to be propitiated. He had 
cared for the tribe when alive; he no doubt would care 
for it when dead ! He was the spirit of authority. Per- 
haps a god ! Ideas that once have lived never really die. 
They live on as taboos, conventions, traditions, rever- 
ences, and "sweet remembrances." Book III ends with 



216 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

the story of the common man. It tells the origin of castes, 
trades, professions, guilds, slavery, and free labor. 

With Book IV, on Judea, Greece, and India, the Out- 
line enters the field of history proper. Here Mr. Wells 
treats of famiUar things in a quite unfamiliar manner. 
He has no great admiration for David and Solomon, both 
of whom are pictured as cruel, treacherous, and bloody 
Eastern monarchs. 

Four chapters are devoted to the Greeks, whom Mr. 
Wells greatly admires as the first truly modern men be- 
cause they were scientific and sceptical. Much valuable 
space is given to the struggles between the Greeks and 
Persians. Many trivial incidents and personalities are 
dwelt upon because of their picturesqueness. Croesus 
gets fully six pages and Socrates only two. On the whole 
the chapter on Greek thought is not up to the mark. Of 
Alexander the Great Mr. Wells has a low opinion. De- 
moralized as a child by his mother, Alexander grew up 
to be insanely egotistical. He did nothing directly of 
any permanent value. As for Hellenizing the East, all 
he did was to wander aimlessly through the region, fight- 
ing any one who came his way and for no particular reason. 
Both as statesman and soldier, Alexander's father, Philip, 
was much his superior. Alexander is ''nothing but a 
personal legend," his greatness an invention of historians. 
About the only thing that he did bequeath to posterity 
is th.e custom of shaving one's face, which he initiated 
because he was enamored of his own youthful loveliness. 
Mr. Wells has small respect for "Heroes of History," 
especially if they happen to be conquerors, and his opin- 
ion of Alexander, just stated^ is certainly entertaining 
and perhaps correct. 

One of the best chapters, if not the best, in the Out- 
line is that on Buddhism. Strangely enough, Mr. Wells 
is at his best when dealing with science and religion. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 217 

The story of the life of Gautama is told with thrilling 
eloquence and fine appreciation. Gautama's teachings, 
Mr. Wells declares, are in "closest harmony with modern 
ideas" and are indisputably "the achievement of one of 
the most penetrating intelligences the world has ever 
known." He corrects the common misconception that 
Nirvana is a state of complete annihilation by explaining 
that it is a state of serenity of soul which comes to one 
who is absorbed in something greater than himself. Mr. 
Wells is lost in admiration for Gautama's doctrine, which 
he identifies with the teaching of history as presented by 
the Outline. However, Buddhism gathered corruption as 
it spread, so that to-day the ideals of Gautama are fairly 
smothered in a hideous mass of idolatry, superstition, and 
sacerdotalism. The teachings of a master are generally 
corrupted by his disciples, who are apt to be enthusiastic 
and undiscriminating propagandists, eager to spread the 
faith at all costs. "Men who would scorn to tell a lie 
in every-day life," writes Mr. Wells, "will become un- 
scrupulous cheats and liars when they have given them- 
selves up to propagandist work." Who has not met 
them these last years ! 

ni 

With the chapter on Buddhism the Outline reaches its 
high-water mark. From thence on, a startling change is 
noticeable. And the change is for the worse. There is 
no longer, as in the first volume, the sure touch and firm 
grasp that comes from knowledge accumulated and di- 
gested. Mr. Wells now moves uneasily among his ma- 
terials, which he has annexed from encyclopaedia articles 
and a few simple manuals. Although he makes compara- 
tively few downright errors, his story of the Roman Em- 
pire, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times is tragically 



218 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

disappointing in view of the hopes he has raised in the 
earlier sections. The second volume is disfigured by in- 
sufficient knowledge and bad judgment, gaucheries* prej- 
udice, and even pettiness, sometimes to a degree that is 
positively shocking. There seems to be no rhyme or 
reason for the inclusion of some things and the exclusion 
of others except the author's whims. In short, there is 
no basis of selection of any kind that I can see. The 
various periods and countries are badly integrated, and 
the reader loses sight completely of the great path that 
humanity has travelled since its appearance on the earth. 

Book V is the history of the Roman Empire. As may 
be expected, the children of Mars fare badly at the hands 
of the anti-militarist Mr. Wells. The Romans were 
brutal "Neanderthal men," incurious, unimaginative, and 
intellectually far inferior to the Greeks. The Roman Em- 
pire was "a colossally ignorant and unimaginative em- 
pire." It foresaw nothing. It had no conception of 
statecraft. It was a gigantic bureaucracy only, that 
taxed and kept the peace. Its inhabitants, both rich and 
poor, led dreary lives, which explains their delight in the 
savage conflicts of the arena. Even though one may dis- 
like the Romans, the fact nevertheless remains that, 
during a period of six centuries, they did unify the West- 
ern world and did create a world polity — that thing so 
much desired by Mr. Wells; they did create the system of 
private law upon which modern jurisprudence is largely 
based; they did create an administrative system which 
functions to this day in Latin Europe. 

According to Mr. Wells, the most significant fact in 
Roman history is the increasing use of money, making 
capital fluid and free. This led to speculation and the 
rise of a money power, which became the efficient help- 
meet of the military. Mr. Wells thinks the Roman 
* Gaucheries, awkward expressions. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 219 

system was "a crude anticipation of our own," with its 
machine politics and professional politicians, class con- 
flicts, mobs, wire-pullers, "common people," reformers, 
political corruption, capitalism, and the ''science of 
thwarting the common man." He tells the story of the 
Gracchi, and of how they were energetically massacred 
by the "champions of law and order." All this is highly 
suggestive. 

Mr. Wells's judgment of famous Romans is amusing, to 
say the least. The picture that he draws of Cato the 
Censor would lead one to believe that that austere worthy 
fairly reeked with morals and was therefore full of hatred 
and all uncharitableness for the gentle and joyous things 
of life. Julius Caesar's greatness, Mr. Wells firmly be- 
lieves, is purely the invention of historians, who magnify 
and dress him up "for the admiration of careless and un- 
critical readers." According to our author, Caesar was 
a Roman politician, rich, corrupt, and dissolute. Like 
Clodius and Catiline he was a vulgar schemer and con- 
spirator, only shrewder and more crafty than they. At 
no time did he show any symptoms of greatness either of 
mind or character. At the very zenith of his power, 
Caesar was much more interested in Cleopatra than in 
Romanizing the world. This belittling of Caesar, as of 
Alexander, is due to Mr. Wells's intense dislike of con- 
querors and the homage that is paid them. 

I was astounded to find that Mr. Wells has swallowed 
— hook, worm, and sinker — the legend of the "Fall" of 
Rome, now long exploded. He characterizes the inva- 
sion of the German barbarians as a "conquest of the 
Empire" which "crumpled up." He does not seem to 
understand that what he calls the "Fall" was a long 
process of decay and absorption. The cause of the 
"Fall," he writes, was the stupidity and " incuriousness " 
of the Romans. He gives us no evidence of being aware 



220 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

of the vast social changes that were taking place during 
the fourth and fifth centuries, the silent economic mas- 
sacre of the lower middle classes, the sinking of the free 
laborers to a condition of serfdom, the race suicide — 
phenomena that surely offer some explanation for the 
decay of the Roman world. 

Book VI deals with Christianity, Islam, and the Mid- 
dle Ages. Naturally one is interested in what the author 
of First and Last Things has to say on the religion of his 
fathers and of his contemporaries. The Outline nar- 
rates the life of Christ in a tone that is reverent and 
"correct." There is no such thrilling eloquence, however, 
as there is in the description of Gautama. 

Christianity, says Mr. Wells, diverged from the pure 
Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth almost from the beginning. 
He has severe things to say of St. Paul as a preacher " of 
the ancient religion of priest and altar and propitiatory 
bloodshed." Soon there came accretions from Mith- 
raism and from the Isis cult of Egypt. Finally there came 
the dogma of the Trinity which to Mr. Wells was "a dis- 
astrous ebullition of the human mind" leading to bitter 
schisms that rent the Church. "Men who quarrelled over 
business affairs," he writes, "wives who wished to annoy 
their husbands, developed antagonistic views on this 
exalted theme." Further on in the book he goes on to 
say that in time "the gory forefinger of the Etruscan 
pontif^x maximus emphasized the teachings of Jesus of 
Nazareth; the mental complexity of the Alexandrian 
Greek entangled them." So deeply hostile is Mr. Wells 
to Christianity that when he does say something nice 
about it he says something which is erroneous. He re- 
peats the common fallacy that Christianity was opposed 
to slavery and brought about its abolition. 

The story of Christianity's rival as a world religion, 
Mohammedanism, is told next. Mr. Wells's opinion of 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 221 

Mohammed is that he was "vain, egotistical, tyrannous, 
and a self -deceiver." Although not an impostor, he was 
"diplomatic, treacherous, ruthless, or compromising as 
the occasion required." But though its founder was at 
once a knave and a fool, Mr. Wells assures us that Islam 
was superior to both Judaism and Christianity. Mr. 
Wells's ideas of Mohammedanism are what Alice in 
Wonderland would call "imaginotions." His enthu- 
siasm for Islam is understandable, however, for its vast 
embrace of millions of all sorts of races and tribes marks 
a great step in the advance of the unity of mankind, the 
goal of all human history. 

Mr. Wells then betakes himself to the Middle Ages. 
The greatness of the hero of the period, Charlemagne, 
another warrior-statesman, posterity has greatly exag- 
gerated, Mr. Wells assures us. Charlemagne was the first 
of the imitation Caesars of which William II was the last. 
Nowhere in this chapter, or in any other, is there an ade- 
quate description of feudal society; there are a few loose 
paragraphs about it. The Crusades, on the other hand, 
receive adequate treatment. Mr. Wells has a sense for 
movements, and he describes these romantic popular 
outpourings with spirit and insight. 

Book VII contains two surprising chapters. The one 
on the Mongols is surprising because it is dull. It is the 
only dull chapter in the two volumes. It is a tedious re- 
cital of Tartar raids and Tartar dynasties. The other 
chapter deals with the Renaissance and the Protestant 
Revolution. It is surprising because there is so little of 
the Renaissance and of Protestantism in it. Petrarch, 
Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and the great artists remain 
unhonored and unsung: for they are barely mentioned. 
There is a poor description of mediaeval scholasticism, 
little or nothing of humanism, and a fairly good account 
of the scientific aspect of the Renaissance. I searched 



222 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

for the origins of Protestantism, and after a great effort 
I found a few lines about Martin Luther tucked away in 
the corner of a long dissertation on Charles V, a mon- 
arch whom Mr. Wells considers commonplace, with a 
"thick upper lip and long clumsy chin." Scarcely a 
word is to be found about Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, and 
Cranmer. All the space that poor Queen Elizabeth gets 
is that she is "among those present" in a list of Tudor 
monarchs. But let that good lady not worry. Shake- 
speare has escaped Mr. Wells's notice altogether. Much 
space is devoted to Machiavelh, Charles V, Francis I, 
and Loyola. 

The reader now encounters long digressions that point 
in every direction. One of these is interesting and im- 
portant. It is on education. Because the Roman Em- 
pire failed to establish a system of popular education, it 
did not develop what Mr. Wells suggestively calls "edu- 
cational government"; and therefore it had to rely upon 
political and military government. The written word 
meant nothing to the average man of ancient times. 
Owing to this lack of popular education, ancient civiliza- 
tion was "a light in a dark lantern." It was Christi- 
anity that first relied successfully upon the power of the 
written word "to link great multitudes of diverse men 
together in common enterprises." Islam later imitated 
Christianity. By establishing schools for popular teach- 
ing the Catholic Church grasped the idea of educational 
government, the ideal of the future. What was lacking 
was the means to get knowledge and information so that 
this new type of government could function. That came 
with printing. Mr. Wells cannot overemphasize the im- 
portance of printing. In a highly interesting and in- 
structive manner he explains how "paper liberated the 
human mind," causing the spread of knowledge so that 
'*it ceased to be the privilege of a favored minority." All 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 223 

modern progress and all hope for the future are inevitably- 
bound up with the printed page. 



IV 

Book VIII concerns itself with the period from the 
seventeenth century to the year 1920. The leading 
theme is the development of the ''Great Power" idea 
and its evil influence upon humanity. It was, Mr. Wells 
believes, responsible for the dynastic wars of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries, the English, American, 
and French Revolutions, the nationalistic wars of the 
nineteenth centuiy, and the World War of 1914. Ac- 
cording to Mr. Wells the modern state was a disastrous 
humbug that ousted Christianity as the chief religion in 
the Western World. At every opportunity he fires vol- 
leys of destructive criticism and withering sarcasm at the 
cult of nationalism, man's real, living god. A nation he 
defines as "in effect any assembly, mixture, or confusion 
of people which is either afflicted by or wishes to be 
afflicted by a foreign office of its own in order that it 
should behave collectively as if it alone constituted hu- 
manity." He denounces this "megalomaniac national- 
ism," and pleads for a "natural political map of the 
world." This should be drawn by a commission of eth- 
nologists, geographers, and sociologists instead of by 
scheming and intriguing diplomats, who settle little and 
unsettle much. To Mr. Wells nationalism is reactionary 
because the idea of a world state "was already in the 
world two thousand years ago, never more to leave it." 
Mr. Wells utterly fails to see that nationalism is not an 
idea that one can eliminate by merely taking thought. 
It is a sentiment that expresses the desire of a community 
to live its own life in its own way, unhampered by re- 
strictions imposed bj'- autocrats or by outsiders. (By 



224 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

the way, was not Mr. Wells himself a hundred per cent 
Britisher during the War?) Nationalism and democracy- 
are one and inseparable. Had there been no subject 
nations there would have been no nationalism. Instead 
of being reactionary, it was the revolutionary force of the 
nineteenth century; and it is one of the great progressive 
forces of our day. Consider India, China, Ireland, Egypt, 
Imperialism, the very antithesis of nationalism, is what 
has brought so much woe to the world. 

Incomparably the worst part of the Outline is that 
which deals with the French Revolution. Being totally 
devoid of any knowledge or understanding of this great 
movement, Mr. Wells naturally turns for support to 
Carlyle's French Revolution. Six precious pages are given 
to Carlylian gabble about marching women, Marat-in-the- 
bathtub, and similar sensational episodes; and only a 
few paragraphs to the tremendous work of the National 
Assembly that completely transformed France from a 
feudal to a modern state. Why is Carlyle's French Revo- 
lution considered a great work of "literature"? I am 
sure that I do not know. I have tried several times to 
read it, but I have never got very far. This famous book 
is hardly more than an endless series of disconnected 
ejaculations, emitted by the dyspeptic philosopher who 
was the greatest bore in all Christendom. Mr. Wells 
actually says that England was a "prospective ally" of 
the French Revolution because of the sympathies of the 
English liberals with the movement, but the French lost 
this "prospective ally" by foolishly declaring war upon 
England. Could there be any poorer judgment? Of 
course the true cause of the French Revolution was the 
"Great Power" game. It would take real ability to 
write a chapter on the French Revolution worse than this. 

Mr. Wells's description of Napoleon is the most enter- 
taining part of the Outline. There is a laugh in every 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 225 

line. The reader must not expect a study of the Na- 
poleonic period, military, political, or social. There is 
nothing there worthy of serious notice. The interest in 
the chapter lies entirely in Mr. Wells's view of Napoleon 
himself. He is " down on" the Man of Destiny, obviously 
for the same reason that he is "down on" Alexander, 
Caesar, and Charlemagne. Napoleon was a soldier and 
no soldier could possibly have been a truly great man. 
Mr. Wells considers Talleyrand an abler statesman than 
Napoleon; Moreau and Hoche, abler generals; Czar 
Alexander I had finer imagination. Mr. Wells also opines 
that Napoleon III was "a much more supple and intelli- 
gent man" than his uncle. This is too much for Ernest 
Barker, who shouts from the foot-notes that "this is a 
paradox to which I cannot subscribe. Please put me 
down as convinced of the opposite." "Even regarded as 
a pest," pursues the imperturbable Mr. Wells, "Napoleon 
was not of supreme rank; he killed far fewer people than 
the influenza epidemic of 1918." His victories were due 
to the fact that he was "marvellously lucky" in his 
" flounderings " ; his diplomatic triumphs were due to 
*'good fortune." Napoleon's career was the "raid of an 
intolerable egotist across the disordered beginning of a 
new time"; "his little imitative imagination was full of 
a deep cunning dream of being Caesar all over again." 
He had wonderful opportunities for creating a new world ; 
and "there lacked nothing to this great occasion but a 
noble imagination, and failing that, Napoleon could do no 
more than strut upon the crest of this great mountain of 
opportunity like a cockerel on a dunghill." 



The account of the nineteenth century opens with a 
description of the Industrial Revolution which is good; 



226 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

but it is not as good as might be expected from Mr. 
Wells, who all his life has been interested in matters so- 
cial and economic. What follows this account it is hard 
for me to state exactly. There is little in it, political, 
economic, or cultural, that I recognize as nineteenth- 
century history. The unification of Germany and of 
Italy get a nonchalant page or two; the reform move- 
ments in England hardly a mention; the United States 
barely a page. Of France, Russia, Austria, and Spain, 
there is little that is worth noting; not a word of indus- 
trial Germany or England; nothing about social legisla- 
tion; nothing about the relation of church and state; 
nothing of literature and art. For Mr. Wells, Mazzini, 
John Bright, and Gambetta never lived; and Bismarck, 
Disraeli, and Cavour barely existed. There is not a word 
about the woman's movement; and for this omission I 
leave the author of Ann Veronica to the tender mercies 
of the psychoanalysts. 

What then is the chapter, a hundred pages long, about ? 
It is all about Mr. Wells — Mr. Wells's view of this, of 
that, and of the other person or thing. Digressions and 
digressions from digressions devour most of the precious 
pages. As I am especially interested in the nineteenth 
century I was dismayed. I read the chapter over again 
and finally came to the conclusion that Mr. Wells did 
have in mind an original way of treating this period: to 
make a study of Darwin, Marx, and Gladstone as the 
truly great personalities of the century. The selection 
is a happy one. With these personalities as a basis he 
could have written a study of the scientific, the revolu- 
tionary, and the liberal movements of the period that 
would have been original and profound. But he fails 
utterly. 

There is a fairly good description of the influence of 
Darwinism, though it is not brought up to date. For 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 227 

example, Mr. Wells wholly overlooks the recent criticisms 
of the doctrine of ''natm-al selection." He shows how 
Darwinism was perverted by Kiplingism; and he actually 
devotes a whole page to Stalky and Co. to explain how 
Kipling led the "children of the middle and upper class 
British pubHc back to the Jungle to learn 'the law.'" 
Nothing more does the author tell us about the progress 
of science during the nineteenth century. 

The explanation of socialism is scrappy and totally in- 
adequate. Mr. Wells devotes four pages to Robert Owen 
and not a word to Saint-Simon or Fourier ! To Karl 
Marx and his ideas he devotes a page, and a very poor 
page. From the Outline one can get almost no idea of 
the meaning of Marxism, now of overshadowing interest 
to the world. Mr. Wells fights shy of Marx. For a 
moment he hovers over Marx's beard, and then flees, 
fearful of being entangled in that vast, "uneventful" 
growth. 

No sooner does the Outline mention the name of Glad- 
stone than the author lashes himself into a fury and falls 
upon that mirror of Clii'istian statesmanship with hammer 
and tongs. He calls Gladstone a profoundly ignorant 
man, who "was educated at Eton College and at Christ 
Church, Oxford, and his mind never recovered from the 
process." The description of Gladstone is unf orgetable : 
"He was a white-faced, black-haired man of incredible 
energy, with ej^es like an eagle's, wrath almost divine, 
and the 'finest barytone voice in Europe.'" Mr. Wells 
brings a strange accusation against Gladstone, namel}^, 
that he made "nationality his guiding political principle." 
In spite of the fact that, at this charge, Ernest Barker 
and Gilbert Murray fire volleys of protests from the foot- 
notes, Mr. Wells continues to belabor Gladstone with 
undiminished zeal. 

We now come to Ireland. At the hand of Mr. Wells 



228 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

Ireland fares badly indeed. His treatment of the Irish 
Question is pervaded by a marked anti-Irish bias. When- 
ever Ireland comes into the Outline she comes in for a 
sound drubbing. Mr. Wells reproaches the Irish for 
having "a long memory for their own wrongs " and actually 
condones England's indifference. He slides over and 
even excuses Cromwell's massacres. The great loss of 
population in Ireland during the nineteenth century ho 
lays to the overcultivation of the potato; and he says 
nothing of English landlordism with its "rack-renting" 
and of the savage persecution of the Irish. Now and then 
the readers of the Outline will be astonished at exhibitions 
of prejudice, strange indeed in a man like Mr. Wells, 
whose outlook is as wide as the world itself. He unmis- 
takably dislikes the "dark whites," or Mediterranean 
peoples, and greatly admires the "Nordic" races, or 
northern Europeans. This comes out very strongly in 
his treatment of the Irish who, he says, are "of the dark 
'Mediterranean' strain, pre-Nordic and pre- Aryan." 
The "dark whites" are inclined to be superstitious, but 
the "Nordics" are free, bold, and rational. "The Eng- 
lish were naturally a non-sacerdotal people; they had the 
Northman's dislike for and disbelief in priests"; but the 
Irish "found the priest congenial." 

At last we come to the World War. The fundamental 
cause was the "Great Power" game that Europe had been 
playing since the seventeenth century and which now 
culminated in universal slaughter. "All the great states 
of Europe before 1914," declares Mr. Wells, "were in a 
condition of aggressive nationalism and drifting toward 
war; the government of Germany did but lead in the 
general movement." He gives a brief and spirited ac- 
count of the war, which he believes could have been ended 
before 1916, had the Allied army chiefs consented to use 
the tank sooner. "But the professional military mind is 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 229 

by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man 
of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his 
gifts in such a calling," Mr. Wells's judgment of the 
Peace Conference follows closely that of Mr. Keynes; 
for the story of the Conference he relies mainly on Mr. 
Dillon's gossipy book. 

In Book IX the historian becomes prophet. He 
climbs to the top of a high mountain to view the Promised 
Land of Future Humanity. In the distance, he sees 
humanity attaining its goal after the long, dreary march 
through the centuries. In one of the most eloquent 
chapters of the book, Man's Coming of Age, he describes 
this goal, "a world league of men," peaceful and happy. 
What does Mr. Wells the prophet see? 

(1) A world with a common religion, neither Christi- 
anity, Islam, nor Buddhism, but "religion itself, pure and 
undefiled." 

(2) A system of world education. 

(3) A world in which there are no armies, no navies, 
and no unemployed. 

(4) A universal organization for scientific research. 

(5) A democratic world govermnent. 

(6) An economic order in which private enterprise ex- 
ploits natural resources no longer as a "robber master" 
but as "a useful, valued, and well-rewarded servant." 

(7) An honest and efficient electoral system. 

(8) An honest and efficient currency system. 

This world order must inevitably come, for "human 
history becomes more and more a race between educa- 
tion and catastrophe." The element in the population 
that will lead mankind to the World State is that be- 
tween the upper and the working classes, an element 
" capable of being aroused to a sense not merely of wicked- 
ness but of the danger of systematic self-seeking in a 
strained, impoverished, and sorely tried world." This 



230 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

bourgeois edaire* must inaugurate an educational and re- 
ligious revival to enlighten all classes "by pen and per- 
suasion, in schools and colleges and books, and in the 
highways and byways of pubhc life." 

VI 

Is Mr. Wells one of the immortals? It would hardly 
be an exaggeration to say that he has been the most in- 
fluential writer in English of oui- day. And his influ- 
ence has not been merely literary. He has the power, 
rare in a novelist, of affecting directly and profoundly 
the political and social views of his readers. Then there 
is that manner of his, that spiritual-romantic manner, 
that invites you to go with him in the search for the Holy 
Grail of social salvation. If ever there was a man who 
viewed society as a spiritual organism, that man is Mr. 
Wells. It is not surprising, therefore, that the fine spirits 
among the rising generation have looked to him as the 
prophet of a new and nobler order of society. And yet 
I say, and I say it regretfully, that in my opinion Mr. 
Wells is not an immortal. He will not pass into futm-e 
generations. My reading of the Outline has convinced 
me of it more than ever. In this book, as in his others, 
he shows his fatal weakness. The beginnings of a Wells 
book are superb, wonderful, inspiring. The problem pre- 
sented is a universal one, and the characters approach it 
with magnificent strides. The reader feels that he is 
about to see a solution of the problem worthy of its 
greatness. Or perhaps Mr. Wells, like Michelangelo and 
Rodin, will leave his creation superbly unfinished, because 
he feels himself inadequate to express the greatness of 
his concepts. But what does take place? When you 
are about half-way through, there is a break; a sudden 

* Bourgeois edaire, enlightened middle class. 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 231 

descent begins; and the book fizzles out completely in 
the end. Over and over again have I had this sad ex- 
perience. Ann Veronica is in revolt against her family 
and society. She runs away from home to live her own 
life, to save her own soul, to earn her own living. In 
the end, she marries and lives happy ever after. Rem- 
ington in The New Machiavelli is appalled at the human 
waste and confusion of present society. In a "white 
passion of statecraft" he dreams of a new statesmanship 
that will end this muddle. What does he do? He es- 
tablishes institutions for the Endowment of Motherhood. 
Stratton in The Passionate Friends desires to be truly 
a "world man." He goes to Africa, to Asia, to America 
to study world problems in order to deal efficiently with 
them. At last he finds a way. He establishes an inter- 
national publishing house that sells cheap editions of good 
books. Trafford in Marriage is a great scientist who 
is driven into commercialism by the needs of an extrava- 
gant wife. He is distraught, so he and his wife go to the 
wilds of Labrador to think it over. There he finds that 
he cares more for his wife than for anything else. He 
returns home happy, and does — nothing. Lady Harman 
in The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman resents the possessive 
attitude of her wealthy husband. She has dreams of 
beauty and of freedom, and falls in love with an artistic 
and intellectual friend. She has several daring adven- 
tures. Suddenly her husband dies. Now she is free. 
What does she do? She devotes her life to the estab- 
lishment of co-operative apartments for the deserving 
middle class. Job Huss in The Undying Fire is stricken 
with misfortune. He is ill of cancer; his school burns 
down; his son is reported dead. The problem of human 
suffering is presented, truly a great problem. In the end 
Job Huss recovers; his school is rebuilt; and his son tiu-ns 
up alive. Desiring to devote his life to the cause of hu- 



232 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 

manity, Huss builds an Imperial Institute that will teach 
people history, geography, and ethnology. The Outline 
of History begins in the magnificent way that I have de- 
scribed. The plan of the book is given in bold strokes. 
It is to rewrite history so that the great purpose of the 
life of man on earth shall become evident. At last his- 
tory has found its true use, to discover the future. And 
what is humanity's future, according to Mr. Wells's 
prophecy? It is a vague, sentimental, middle-class, 
middle-age, mid- Victorian vision of peace and prosperity. 
What is there in this vision to which Samuel Smiles would 
have objected ! Was it for this that the hairy ape-man 
shambled into full humanity! Was this to be the out- 
come 

Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 

Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain ! 

What ails Mr. Wells? What is the disease that proves 
him mortal? This is what I now propose to diagnose. 
Mr. Wells is a man of extraordinary imagination, ex- 
traordinary both for its vividness and versatility; it is 
poetic, scientific, religious, social, political, literary. In 
my opinion he is the most highly imaginative human 
being now living. But his intellect is not extraordinary. 
Toward the great problems of the world his imagination 
makes a magnificent stride; but his intellect cannot keep 
pace with it. Hence in the realm of ideas he is sugges- 
tive, not creative. He arouses, he stimulates, he throws 
out fine hints, he suggests new ways of looking at things; 
but he is utterly incapable of being the architect of any 
new system of thought, be it political, social, moral, or 
philosophical. Condemned to sterility, he becomes sen- 
timental and half-mystical. Whenever he does succeed 
in giving birth to an idea, it immediately expires in a 
sigh. What political theories has he fashioned comparable 



J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 233 

to those of Rousseau, Locke, or Mill? What social the- 
ories, comparable to those of Comte or Saint-Simon? 
What interpretation of history comparable to that of 
Buckle or of Marx? Indeed, what characters in fiction 
has he created that have the immortality of Emma 
Bovary, Pere Goriot, Pickwick, Anna Karenina, Rudin, 
Becky Sharp, Bergeret, Raskolnikov, Pecksniff, or Tess 
of the D'Urbervilles? 

The Outline, with all its shortcomings, is nevertheless 
a tour de force such as only a remarkably versatile man 
like Mr. Wells could have accomplished. It gives a new 
model for the writing of history, with its magnificent 
sweep, wide range, deep sympathies, and progressive 
view-point. Once immersed in these volumes, students 
of history no less than others will gain an indelible im- 
pression of going through a great and abiding experi- 
ence. To read the book is in itself a liberal education. 



THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 



JOSEPH ADDISON 

FEMALE ORATORS 



Joseph Addison (1672-1719) is the foremost figure 
among the essayists of the eighteenth centiu-y. He was 
the son of an Enghsh clergyman, in a country parish. He 
was sent to Oxford, and completed his education by Euro- 
pean travel. He gained literary recognition by a poem 
on the battle of Blenheim, and was rewarded by various 
pohtical offices. When his friend Steele began the Taller, 
Addison contributed a number of essays to it, and in the 
Spectator the two men worked together. 

The age in which they lived was a coarse one. Profane 
speech and bad manners were the fashion. Addison was 
too shrewd a man to attack these things directly, or to 
denounce them violently; that would only bring ridicule 
upon him. But if he could adroitly manage to make these 
things appear ridiculous, he might gain his end. So in 
the Spectator he introduces imaginary characters, and 
has these personages discuss the manners and follies of 
the day. The two essays here printed deal with condi- 
tions not peculiar to Addison's age: female orators and 
people who are constantly worrying about their health 
we have always with us. 

The style of Addison has always been considered a 
model of English prose. Franklin in his autobiography 
tells how he improved his style by imitating Addison, 
in the same way that Stevenson describes in A College 
Magazine. Samuel Johnson said: "Whoever would at- 
tain an English style, familiar but not coarse, elegant 
but not ostentatious, must give liis days and nights to 
the study of Addison." 



JOSEPH ADDISON 

FEMALE ORATORS 
(From the Spectator, December 13, 1711) 

We are told by some ancient authors, that Socrates 
was instructed in eloquence by a woman, whose name, if 
I am not mistaken, was Aspasia. I have indeed very 
often looked upon that art as the most proper for the 
female sex, and I think the universities would do well to 
consider whether they should not fill the rhetoric chairs 
with she professors. 

It has been said in the praise of some men, that they 
could talk whole hours together upon anything; but it 
must be owned to the honor of the other sex, that there 
are many among them who can talk whole hours together 
upon nothing. I have known a woman branch out into 
a long extempore dissertation upon the edging of a petti- 
coat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup, in 
all the figures of rhetoric. 

Were women admitted to plead in courts of judicature, 
I am persuaded they would carry the eloquence of the 
bar to greater heights than it has yet arrived at. If any 
one doubts this, let him but be present at those debates 
which frequently arise among the ladies of the British 
fishery.* 

The first kind therefore of female orators which I 
shall take notice of, are those who are employed in stir- 
ring up the passions, a part of rhetoric in which Socrates 

* British fishery, a playful reference to the famous fish-market at 
Billingsgate. The women who kept the stalls were so noted for 
profanity that the word billingsgate came to mean profane or scurri- 
lous speech. 

237 



238 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 

his wife * had perhaps made a greater proficiency than 
his above-mentioned teacher. 

The second kind of female orators are those who deal 
in invectives, and who are commonly known by the name 
of the censorious. The imagination and elocution of 
this set of rhetoricians is wonderful. With what a flu- 
ency of invention, and copiousness of expression, will 
they enlarge upon every little slip in the behavior of 
another! With how many different circumstances, and 
wdth what variety of phrases, will they tell over the same 
story! I have known an old lady make an unhappy 
marriage the subject of a month's conversation. She 
blamed the bride in one place; pitied her in another; 
laughed at her in a third; wondered at her in a fourth; 
was angry with her in a fifth; and in short, wore out a 
pair of coach-horses in expressing her concern for her. 
At length, after having quite exhausted the subject on 
this side, she made a visit to the new-married pair, praised 
the wife for the prudent choice she had made, told her 
the unreasonable reflections which some malicious people 
had cast upon her, and desired that they might be better 
acquainted. The censure and approbation of this kind 
of women are therefore only to be considered as helps 
to discourse. 

A third kind of female orators may be comprehended 
under the word gossips. Mrs. Fiddle Faddle is perfectly 
accomplished in this sort of eloquence; she launches out 
into descriptions of christenings, runs divisions upon an 
head-dress, knows every dish of meat that is served up 
in her neighborhood, and entertains her company a whole 
afternoon together with the wit of her little boy, before 
he is able to speak. 

The coquet may be looked upon as a fourth kind of 
female orator. To give herself the larger field for dis- 
* His wife, modern usage would be, Socrates's wife. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 239 

course, she hates and loves in the same breath, talks to 
her lap-dog or parrot, is uneasy in all kinds of weather, 
and in every part of the room : she has false quarrels and 
feigned obligations to all the men of her acquaintance; 
sighs when she is not sad, and laughs when she is not 
merry. The coquet is in particular a great mistress of 
that part of oratory which is called action, and indeed 
seems to speak for no other purpose, but as it gives her 
an opportunity of stirring a limb, or varying a feature, 
of glancing her eyes, or playing with her fan. 

As for news-mongers, politicians, mimics, stor^'^-tellers, 
with other characters of that nature, which give birth to 
loquacity, they are as commonly found among the men 
as the women; for which reason I shall pass them over in 
silence. 

I have often been puzzled to assign a cause why women 
should have this talent of a ready utterance in so much 
greater perfection than men. I have sometimes fancied 
that they have not a retentive power, or the faculty of 
suppressing their thoughts, as men have, but that they 
are necessitated to speak everything they think, and if 
so, it would perhaps furnish a very strong argument to 
the Cartesians, for the supporting of their doctrine that 
the soul always thinks. But as several are of opinion 
that the fair sex are not altogether strangers to the art 
of dissembling and concealing their thoughts, I have been 
forced to relinquish that opinion, and have therefore en- 
deavored to seek after some better reason. In order to 
it, a friend of mine, who is an excellent anatomist, has 
promised me by the first opportunity to dissect a woman's 
tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it 
certain juices which render it so wonderfully voluble or 
flippant, or whether the fibres of it may not be made up 
of a finer or more pliant thread, or whether there are not 
in it some particular muscles which dart it up and down 



240 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 

by such sudden glances and vibrations; or whether in the 
last place, there may not be certain undiscovered chan- 
nels running from the head and the heart to this little 
instrument of loquacity, and conveying into it a perpetual 
affluence of animal spirits. Nor must I omit the reason 
which Hudibras * has given, why those who can talk on 
trifles speak with the greatest fluency; namely, that the 
tongue is like a race-horse, which runs the faster the lesser 
weight it carries. 

Which of these reasons soever may be looked upon as 
the most probable, I think the Irishman's thought was 
very natural, who after some hours' conversation with a 
female orator, told her, that he believed her tongue was 
very glad when she was asleep, for that it had not a mo- 
ment's rest all the while she was awake. 

That excellent old baUad of The Wanton Wife of Bath 
has the following remarkable lines: 

I think, quoth Thomas, Women's Tongues 
Of Aspen Leaves are made. 

And Ovid, though in the description of a very bar- 
barous circumstance, teUs us, that when the tongue of a 
beautiful female was cut out, and thrown upon the 
ground, it could not forbear muttering even in that pos- 
ture. 

If a tongue would be talking without a mouth, what 
could it have done when it had all its organs of speech, 
and accomplices of sound about it? I might here men- 
tion the story of the pippin-woman, had not I some reason 
to look upon it as fabulous. 

I must confess I am so wonderfully charmed with the 
music of this little instrument, that I would by no means 
discourage it. All that I aim at by this dissertation is, 
to cure it of several disagreeable notes, and in particular 

* Hudibras, the title of a famous satirical poem by Samuel Butler. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 241 

of those little jarrings and dissonances which arise from 
anger, censoriousness, gossiping and coquetry. In short, 
I would always have it tuned by good nature, truth, dis- 
cretion and sincerity. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 

LIVING IN A PAIR OF SCALES 



Letters to the editor appear in almost every journal. 
Although the editors of the Spectator did not publish their 
names, in the first number of the paper they gave an ad- 
dress to which letters might be sent. These letters often 
provided material for an essay. Sometimes the editors 
wrote these letters themselves, as one might set up a 
straw man merely to knock him down. Such is the case 
with the letter in the essay that follows. In plan, the 
essay is typical of many of the Spectator papers, and in- 
deed of the periodical essay of that period. The editor 
first introduces an imaginary character who is to per- 
sonify some weakness of human nature; in this case it 
is the man who lived in a pair of scales. When he has 
been brought forward, and made to appear sufficiently 
ridiculous, the editor then dismisses him and proceeds 
to comment upon the trait of character shown, with 
advice as to a better course of conduct. Note the play 
of quiet humor in the essay. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 

LIVING IN A PAIR OF SCALES 

(From the Spectator, March 29, 1711) 

The following letter will explain itself, and needs no 
apology. 

"SIR, 

" I am one of that sickly tribe who are commonly known 
by the name of valetudinarians, and do confess to you, 
that I first contracted this ill habit of body, or rather of 
mind, by the study of physic. I no sooner began to 
peruse books of this nature, but I found my pulse was 
irregular, and scarce ever read the account of any disease 
that I did not fancy myself afflicted with. Dr. Syden- 
ham's learned treatise of fevers threw me into a lingering 
hectic, which hung upon me all the while I was reading 
that excellent piece. I then applied myself to the study 
of several authors, who have written upon phthisical dis- 
tempers, and by that means fell into a consumption, 'til 
at length, growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed out 
of that imagination. Not long after this I found in my- 
self all the symptoms of the gout, except pain, but was 
cured of it by a treatise upon the gravel, written by a 
very ingenious author, who (as it is usual for physicians 
to convert one distemper into another) eased me of the 
gout by giving me the stone. I at length studied myself 
into a complication of distempers; but accidentally taking 
into my hand that ingenious discourse written by Sanc- 
torius I was resolved to direct myself by a scheme of 
rules, which I had collected from his observations. The 
learned world are very well acquainted with that gentle- 

245 



246 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 

man's invention; who, for the better carrjang on of his 
experiments, contrived a certain mathematical chair, 
which was so artificially hung upon springs, that it would 
weigh anything as well as a pair of scales. By this means 
he discovered how many ounces of his food passed by 
perspiration, what quantity of it was turned into nour- 
ishment, and how much went away by the other channels 
and distributions of nature. 

"Having provided myseK with this chair, I used to 
study, eat, drink, and sleep in it; in so much that I may be 
said, for these three last years, to have lived in a pair of 
scales. I compute myself, when I am in full health, to 
be precisely two hundredweight, falling short of it about 
a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after 
a very full meal; so that it is my continual emplovTnent, 
to trim the balance between these two volatile pounds 
in my constitution. In my ordinary meals I fetch my- 
self up to two hundredweight and a half pound; and 
if after having dined I find myself fall short of it, I drink 
just so much small beer, or eat such a quantity of bread, 
as is sufficient to make me weight. In my greatest ex- 
cesses I do not transgress more than the other half pound ; 
which, for my health's sake, I do the first Monday in 
every month. As soon as I find myself duly poised after 
dinner, I walk till I have perspired five ounces and four 
scruples; and when I discover, by my chair, that I am so 
far, reduced, I fall to my books, and study away three 
ounces more. As for the remaining parts of the pound, 
I keep no account of them. I do not dine and sup by 
the clock, but by my chair, for when that informs me 
my pound of food is exhausted I conclude myself to be 
hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. In my 
days of abstinence I lose a pound and a half, and on 
solemn fasts am two pound lighter than on other days in 
the year. 



JOSEPH ADDISON 247 

"I allow myself, one night with another, a quarter of 
a pound of sleep within a few grains more or less; and if 
upon my rising I find that I have not consumed my whole 
quantity, I take out the rest in my chair. Upon an exact 
calculation of what I expended and received the last 
year, which I always register in a book, I find the medium 
to be two hundredweight, so that I cannot discover that 
I am impaired one ounce in my health during a whole 
twelve-month. And yet. Sir, notwithstanding this my 
great care to ballast myself equally every day, and to 
keep my body in its proper poise, so it is that I find my- 
self in a sick and languishing condition. My complexion 
is grown very sallow, my pulse low, and my body hy- 
dropsical. Let me therefore beg you, Sir, to consider me 
as your patient, and to give me more certain rules to walk 
by than those I have already observed, and you will very 

Your Humble Servant." 

This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph 
written on the monument of a valetudinarian: Stavo ben, 
ma per star meglio, sto qui:* which it is impossible to 
translate. The fear of death often proves mortal, and 
sets people on methods to save their lives, which infal- 
libly destroy them. This is a reflection made by some 
historians, upon observing that there are many more 
thousands killed in a flight than in a battle, and may be 
applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons 
that break their constitutions by physic, and throw them- 
selves into the arms of death, by endeavoring to escape 
it. This method is not only dangerous, but below the 
practice of a reasonable creature. To consult the preser- 
vation of life, as the only end of it, to make our health 
our business, to engage in no action that is not part of a 

* Stavo ben, etc. It may be freely translated thus: I was well, I 
would be better, and here I am. 



248 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 

regimen, or course of physic, are purposes so abject, so 
mean, so unworthy human nature, that a generous soul 
would rather die than submit to them. Besides that a 
continual anxiety for life vitiates all the rehshes of it, 
and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is 
impossible we should take delight in anything that we 
are every moment afraid of losing. 

I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think 
any one to blame for taking due care of their health. On 
the contrary, as cheerfulness of mind and capacity for 
business are in a great measure the effects of a well-tem- 
pered constitution, a man cannot be at too much pains 
to cultivate and preserve it. But this care, which we are 
prompted to not only by common sense but by duty and 
instinct, should never engage us in groundless fears, 
melancholy apprehensions and imaginary distempers, 
which are natural to every man who is more anxious to 
live than how to live. In short, the preservation of life 
should be only a secondary concern, and the direction of 
it our principal. If we have this frame of mind, we shall 
take the best means to preserve life, without being over- 
solicitous about the event; and shall arrive at that point 
of felicity which Martial has mentioned as the perfection 
of happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing for death. 

In answer to the gentleman who tempers his health 
by ounces and by scruples, and instead of complying with 
those natural solicitations of hunger and thirst, drowsiness 
or love of exercise, governs himself by the prescriptions of 
his chair, I shall tell him a short fable. Jupiter, says the 
mythologist, to reward the piety of a certain countryman 
promised to give him whatever he would ask. The 
countryman desired that he might have the management 
of the weather in his own estate. He obtained his request, 
and immediately distributed rain, snow, and sunshine, 
among his several fields, as he thought the nature of the 



JOSEPH ADDISON 249 

soil required. At the end of the year, when he expected 
to see a more than ordinary crop, his harvest fell infinitely 
short of that of his neighbors. Upon which (says the 
fable) he desired Jupiter to take the weather again into 
his own hands, or that otherwise he should utterly ruin 
himself. 



RICHARD STEELE 

THE STAGE-COACH 



The following essay belongs in the series known as the 
Sir Roger de Coverley papers, which appeared in the 
Spectator. Its connection with the series, however, is 
confined to the mention of Sir Roger in the first sentence. 
The real subject of the essay is behavior in public convey- 
ances. Travellers by stage-coach were far more at the 
mercy of a quarrelsome or impertinent fellow passenger 
than are travellers to-day. In this essay Steele teaches 
a needed lesson, yet does it with such good humor, such 
touches of wit, such deft characterization, that we are 
pleasantly carried along, and cannot help agreeing with 
his conclusion. It is an excellent example of the method 
by which the editors of the Spectator set about to improve 
the manners of the time. For biographical sketch of 
Steele, see page 2. 



RICHARD STEELE 

THE STAGE-COACH 

(From the Spectator, August 1, 1711) 

Having notified to my good friend Sir Roger that I 
should set out for London the next day, his horses were 
ready at the appointed hour in the evening; and attended 
by one of his grooms, I arrived at the county town at 
twilight, in order to be ready for the stage-coach the day 
following. As soon as we arrived at the inn, the servant 
who waited upon me, inquired of the chamberlain in my 
hearing what company he had for the coach? The fellow 
answered, Mrs. Betty Arable, the great fortune, and the 
widow her mother; a recruiting officer (who took a place 
because they were to go); young Squire Quickset her 
cousin (that her mother wished her to be married to); 
Ephi-aim the Quaker, her guardian; and a gentleman that 
had studied himself dumb from Sir Roger de Coverley's. 
I observed by what he said of myself, that according to 
his office he dealt much in intelligence; and doubted not 
but there was some foundation for his reports of the rest 
of the company, as well as for the whimsical account he 
gave of me. The next morning at daybreak we were all 
called; and I, who know my own natural shyness, and 
endeavor to be as little liable to be disputed with as pos- 
sible, dressed immediately, that I might make no one 
wait. The first preparation for our setting out was, that 
the captain's half-pike was placed near the coachman, 
and a drum behind the coach. In the meantime the 
drummer, the captain's equipage, was very loud, that 
none of the captain's things should be placed so as to be 

253 



254 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 

spoiled; upon which his cloak bag was fixed in the seat 
of the coach; and the captain himself, according to a 
frequent, though invidious behavior of mihtary men, 
ordered his man to look sharp, that none but one of the 
ladies should have the place he had taken fronting to 
the coach box. 

We were in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat 
with that dislike which people not too good-natured 
usually conceive of each other at first sight. The coach 
jumbled us insensibly into some sort of familiarity: and 
we had not moved above two miles, when the widow asked 
the captain what success he had in his recruiting? The 
officer, with a frankness he believed very graceful, told 
her, "That indeed he had but very little luck, and had 
suffered much by desertion, therefore should be glad to 
end his warfare in the service of her or her fair daughter. 
In a word," continued he, "I am a soldier, and to be plain 
is my character: you see me, madam, young, sound, and 
impudent; take me yourseK, widow, or give me to her, I 
will be wholly at your disposal. I am a soldier of for- 
tune, ha!" This was followed by a vain laugh of his 
own, and a deep silence of all the rest of the company. 
I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep, which I 
did with aU siseed. "Come," said he, "resolve upon it, 
we will make a wedding at the next town: we will wake 
this pleasant companion who is fallen asleep, to be the 
brideman," and giving the Quaker a clap on the knee 
he concluded: "This sly saint, who, I'll warrant, under- 
stands what's what as well as you or I, widow, shall give 
the bride as father." 

The Quaker, who happened to be a man of smartness, 
answered: "Friend, I take it in good part that thou hast 
given me the authority of a father over this comely and 
virtuous child; and I must assure thee, that if I have 
the giving her, I shall not bestow her on thee. Thy mirth, 



RICHARD STEELE 255 

friend, savoreth of folly: thou art a person of a light mind; 
thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty. 
Verily, it is not from thy fulness, but thy emptiness that 
thou hast spoken this day. Friend, friend, we have hired 
this coach in partnership with thee, to carry us to the 
great city; we cannot go any other way. This worthy 
mother must hear thee if thou wilt needs utter thy follies; 
we cannot help it, friend, I say; if thou wilt we must 
hear thee: but if thou wert a man of understanding, thou 
wouldst not take advantage of thy courageous counte- 
nance to abash us children of peace. Thou art, thou say- 
est, a soldier; give quarter to us, who cannot resist thee. 
Why didst thou fleer at our friend, who feigned himself 
asleep? he said nothing: but how dost thou know what 
he containeth? If thou speakest improper things in the 
hearing of this virtuous young virgin, consider it is an 
outrage against a distressed person that cannot get from 
thee. To speak indiscreetly what we are obliged to hear, 
by being hasped up with thee in this public vehicle, is 
in some degree assaulting on the highroad." 

Here Ephraim paused, and the captain with an happy 
and uncommon impudence (which can be convicted and 
support itself at the same time) cried: "Faith, friend, I 
thank thee; I should have been a little impertinent if 
thou hadst not reprimanded me. Come, thou art, I see, 
a smoaky * old fellow, and I'll be very orderly the ensuing 
part of the journey. I was going to give myself airs, but, 
ladies, I beg pardon." 

The captain was so little out of humor, and our com- 
pany was so far from being soured by this little ruffle, 
that Ephraim and he took a particular delight in being 
agreeable to each other for the future; and assumed their 
different provinces in the conduct of the company. Our 

* Smoaky, a slang phrase of the time, meaning, quick to smell 
out an idea. 



256 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 

reckonings, apartments, and accommodation, fell under 
Ephraim; and the captain looked to all disputes on the 
road, as the good behavior of our coachman, and the right 
we had of taking place as going to London of all vehicles 
coming from thence. The occurrences we met with were 
ordinary, and very little happened which could entertain 
by the relation of them. But when I considered the 
company we were in, I took it for no small good fortune 
that the whole journey was not spent in impertinences, 
which to one part of us might be an entertainment, to 
the other a suffering. What therefore Ephraim said when 
we were almost arrived at London, had to me an air not 
only of good understanding but good breeding. Upon 
the young lady's expressing her satisfaction in the journey, 
and declaring how delightful it had been to her, Ephraim 
declared himself as follows: "There is no ordinary part 
of human life which expresseth so much a good mind, 
and a right inward man, as his behavior upon meeting 
with strangers, especially such as may seem the most 
unsuitable companions to him; such a man, when he 
falleth in the way with persons of simplicity and innocence, 
however knowing he may be in the ways of men, will not 
vaunt himself thereof, but will rather hide his superiority 
to them, that he may not be painful unto them. My 
good friend," continued he, turning to the oflScer, "thee 
and I are to part by and by, and peradventure we may 
never meet again; but be advised by a plain man: Modes 
and apparel are but trifles to the real man, therefore do 
not think such a man as thyself terrible for thy garb, 
nor such a one as me contemptible for mine. When two 
such as thee and I meet, with affections as we ought to 
have toward each other, thou shouldst rejoice to see my 
peaceable demeanor, and I should be glad to see thy 
strength and ability to protect me in it." 



TEE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 



FRANCIS BACON 

STUDIES; TRUTH; TRAVEL; RICHES; GREAT 
PLACE; FRIENDSHIP 



Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was one of the great figures 
of the Elizabethan age. His father was Lord Keeper of 
the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth. Francis Bacon 
grew up in the court; he was educated at Cambridge 
University, and afterward studied law. He became a 
member of Parliament, where he was noted for his ability 
to say much in few words. Ben Jonson says of him: 
"There happened in my time one noble speaker who was 
full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spake more 
neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less 
emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. His hearers 
. could not cough or look aside from him without loss. The 
fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make 
an end." Under James I Bacon was made Lord High 
Chancellor of England, the highest judicial position in 
the land. He was accused of receiving bribes, tried, and 
removed from office. He admitted receiving money from 
suitors, but declared that he had not allowed this to influ- 
ence his decisions. The remainder of his life he spent in 
retirement, devoting himself to study and writing. Most 
of his works are written in Latin and deal with philosophy 
and science. His fame as an English writer rests upon his 
essays. They are marked by clearness and conciseness of 
style, depth of thought, and occasional beauty of imagery. 
They are full of quotable sentences. To use his own 
words, some books "are to be tasted, others to be swal- 
lowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." His 
essays are among the books to be chewed and digested. 



FRANCIS BACON 

OF STUDIES 

(This and the five following essays are from Essays, or Counsels, 
Civil and Moral.) 

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. 
Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; 
for ornament is in discourse; and for ability is in the 
judgment and disposition of business. For expert men 
can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by 
one; but the general counsels, and the plots and mar- 
shalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. 
To spend too much time in studies is sloth, to use them 
too much for ornament is affectation, to make judgment 
only by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They per- 
fect nature, and are perfected by experience. For natural 
abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by 
study; and studies themselves do give forth directions 
too much at large, except they be bounded in by experi- 
ence. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire 
them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their 
own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above 
them, won by observation. 

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and 
take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to 
weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others 
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; 
that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to 
be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read 
wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books 
also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them 
by others; but that would be only in the less important 

259 



260 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled 
books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. 
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and 
writing an exact man. And therefore if a man write lit- 
tle, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, 
he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, 
he had need have much cunning to seem to know that 
he doth not. 

Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathemat- 
ics subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic 
and rhetoric able to contend. " Abeunt studia in mores." * 
Nay, there is no stond f or impediment in the wit but may 
be wrought out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body 
may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for 
the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, 
gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and 
the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study 
the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be 
called away never so little, he must begin again. If his 
wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him 
study the schoolmen, for they are cymini sectores.X If he 
be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing 
to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' 
cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special 
receipt. 

OF TRUTH 

"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate;§ and would not 
stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in 
giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affect- 
ing free will in thinking, as well as in acting. And 

* Abeunt, etc., studies pass over into habits. 

t Stond, an obsolete form of stand, here used to mean a halt. 

t Cymini sectores, splitters of hairs. 

§ Pilate. See Neiv Testament, John, xviii, 38. 



FRANCIS BACON 261 

though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet 
there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the 
same veins, though there be not so much blood in tliem 
as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the 
difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of 
truth; nor again, that when it is found it imposeth upon 
men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a 
natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the 
later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and 
is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should 
love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with 
poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for 
the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth is a 
naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, 
and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so stately 
and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come 
to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it 
will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that 
showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth 
ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there 
were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering 
hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and 
the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of 
men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indis- 
position, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the 
Fathers,* in great severity, called poesy vinum dcemomnn,f 
because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with 
the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth 
through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth 
in it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. 

But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved 
judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth 
judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is 

* Fathers, St. Augustine, in his Confessions. 
t Vinum dcemonum, the wine of demons. 



262 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, 
which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which 
is the enjoying of it — is the sovereign good of human na- 
ture. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, 
was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; 
and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his 
Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the mat- 
ter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; 
and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of 
his chosen. The poet * that beautified the sect that was 
otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: 
" It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships 
tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window 
of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof 
below ; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon 
the vantage ground of truth" (a hill not to be com- 
manded, and where the air is always clear and serene) 
"and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and 
tempests, in the vale below"; so always, that this pros- 
pect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Cer- 
tainly, it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind 
move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the 
poles of truth. 

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to 
the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even 
by those that practise it not, that clear and round deal- 
ing is the honor of man's nature; and that mixture of 
falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver; which 
may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth 
it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings 
of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and 
not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a 
man with shame as to be found false and perfidious. 

*The poet, Lucretius, a Roman poet, of the "sect" of the Epi- 
cureans. 



FRANCIS BACON 263 

And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he in- 
quired the reason why the word of the lie should be such 
a disgrace, and such an odious charge; saith he: "If it 
be well weighed, to say that a man lieth is as much as 
to say that he is brave toward God and a coward toward 
men." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. 
Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, 
cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall 
be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the 
generations of men; it being foretold that when Christ 
cometh "He shall not find faith upon the earth." * 

OF TRAVEL 

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in 
the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into 
a country before he hath some entrance into the language, 
goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men 
travel under some tutor or grave servant, I allow well; 
so that he be such a one that hath the language and hath 
been in the country before, whereby he may be able to 
tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the coun- 
try where they go, what acquaintances they are to seek, 
what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth. For else 
j'oung men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. 

It is a strange thing that in sea voyages, where there is 
nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make 
diaries; but in land travel, wherein so much is to be ob- 
served, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were 
fitter to be registered than observation. Let diaries 
therefore be brought in use. 

The things to be seen and observed are: the courts of 
princes, specially when they give audience to ambas- 
sadors; the coiu-ts of justice, while they sit and hear 
* Quoted from Luke, xviii, 8. 



264 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches 
and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein 
extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns, 
and so the havens and harbors; antiquities and ruins; 
libraries, colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any 
are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and 
pleasure near great cities, armories, arsenals, magazines, 
exchanges, burses, warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, 
fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such 
whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries 
of jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to con- 
clude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they 
go: after all which the tutors or servants ought to make 
diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, masques, feasts, wed- 
dings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men 
need not to be put in mind of them; yet are they not to 
be neglected. 

If you will have a young man to put his travel into a 
little room, and in short time to gather much, this you 
must do: first, as was said, he must have some entrance 
into the language before he goeth. Then he must have 
such a servant or tutor as knoweth the country, as was 
likewise said. Let him carry with him also some card 
or book describing the country where he travelleth, which 
will be a good key to his inquiry. Let him keep also a 
diary. Let him not stay long in one city or town; more 
or 'less as the place deserveth, but not long. Nay, when 
he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging 
from one end and part of the town to another, which is a 
great adamant of acquaintance. Let him sequester him- 
self from the company of his countrymen, and diet in 
such places where there is good company of the nation 
where he travelleth. Let him, upon his removes from 
one place to another, procure recommendation to some 
person of quality residing in the place whither he removeth, 



FRANCIS BACON 265 

that he may use his favor in those things he desireth to 
see or know. Thus he may abridge his travel with much 
profit. 

As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, 
that which is most of all profitable is acquaintance with 
the secretaries and employed men of ambassadors; for so 
in travelling in one country he shall suck the experience 
of many. Let him also see and visit eminent persons in 
all kinds which are of great name abroad, that he may 
be able to tell how the life agreeth with the fame. For 
quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided. 
They are commonly for mistresses, healths, place, and 
words. And let a man beware how he keepeth company 
with choleric and quarrelsome persons, for they will en- 
gage him into their own quarrels. When a traveller re- 
turneth home, let him not leave the countries where he 
hath travelled altogether behind him, but maintain a 
correspondence by letters with those of his acquaintance 
which are of most worth. And let his travel appear 
rather in his discom-se than in his apparel or gesture; and 
in his discourse let him be rather advised in his answers 
than forward to tell stories. And let it appear that he 
doth not change his country manners for those of foreign 
parts, but only prick in some flowers of that he hath 
learned abroad, into the customs of his own country. 

OF RICHES 

I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. 
The Roman word is better, "impedimenta," for as the 
baggage is to an army so is riches to virtue. It cannot 
be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; 
yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the 
victory. 

Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the 



266 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

distribution; the rest is but conceit. So saith Solomon, 
"Where much is, there are many to consume it; and what 
hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes?"* The 
personal fruition in any man cannot reach to feel great 
riches; there is a custody of them, or a power of dole and 
donative of them, or a fame of them, but no solid use to 
the owner. Do you not see what feigned prices are set 
upon little stones and rarities? And what works of os- 
tentation are undertaken, because there might seem to 
be some use of great riches? But then, you will say, 
they may be of use to buy men out of dangers or troubles. 
As Solomon saith: "Riches are as a stronghold in the 
imagination of the rich man."t But this is excellently ex- 
pressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact. 
For certainly great riches have sold more men than they 
have bought out. 

Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get 
justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave con- 
tentedly. Yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of 
them; but distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rabirius 
Posthumas, "in studio rei amplificandse apparebat, non 
avaritise prsedam, sed instrumentum bonitati quaeri."J 
Hearken also to Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering 
of riches: "Qui festinat ad divitas, non erit insons." § 
The poets feign that when Plutus, which is riches, is sent 
from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly, but when he is 
ssnt from Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot; meaning, 
that riches gotten by good means and just labor pace 
slowly, but when they come by the death of others, as 
by the course of inheritance, testaments, and the like, 

* From Ecclesiastes, v, 11. f From Proverbs, xviii, 11. 

t In studio, etc. In the endeavor to increase his estate, it was evi- 
dent that he sought, not the plunder of avarice, but the means of 
doing good. 

§ Qui festinat, etc. He that makes waste to be rich shall not be 
innocent. Proverbs, xxviii, 22. 



FRANCIS BACON 267 

they come tumbling upon a man. But it might be ap- 
plied likewise to Pluto, taking him for the devil. For 
when riches come from the devil, as by fraud, and op- 
pression, and unjust means, they come upon speed. 

The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul. 
Parsimony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent, for 
it withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity. 
The improvement of the ground is the most natural ob- 
taining of riches, for it is our great mother's blessing, the 
earth's; but it is slow. And yet, where men of great 
wealth do stoop to husbandry, it multiplieth riches exceed- 
ingly. I knew a nobleman in England that had the 
greatest audits of any man in my time: a great grazier, 
a great sheep master, a great timber man, a great collier, 
a great corn master, a great lead man, and so of iron, 
and a number of the like points of husbandry; so as the 
earth seemed a sea to him, in respect of the perpetual 
importation. It was truly observed by one, that him- 
self came very hardly to a little riches, and very easily to 
great riches. For when a man's stock is come to that, 
that he can expect the prime of markets, and overcome 
those bargains which, for their greatness, are few men's 
money, and be partner in the industries of younger men, 
he cannot but increase mainly. 

The gains of ordinary trades and vocations are honest, 
and furthered by two things chiefly, by diligence, and by 
a good name for good and fair dealing. But the gains 
of bargains are of a more doubtful nature, when men 
shall wait upon others' necessity; broke* by servants and 
instruments to draw them on; put off others cunningly 
that would be better chapmenf; and the like practices, 
which are crafty and naught. As for the chopping of 
bargains, — when a man buys, not to hold, but to sell over 
again, — that commonly grindeth double, both upon the 

* Broke, negotiate. f Chapmen, buyers. 



268 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

seller and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, 
if the hands be well chosen that are trusted. Usury is 
the certainest means of gain, though one of the worst, 
as that whereby a man doth eat his bread ''in sudore 
vultus alieni,* and besides, doth plough upon Sundays. 
But yet, certain though it be, it hath flaws; for that the 
scriveners and brokers do value unsound men, to serve 
their own turn. 

The fortune in being the first in an invention, or in a 
privilege, doth cause sometimes a wonderful overgrowth 
in riches, as it was with the first sugarman in the Ca- 
naries. Therefore, if a man can play the true logician, 
to have as well judgment as invention, he may do great 
matters, especially if the times be fit. He that resteth 
upon gains certain, shall hardly grow to great riches; 
and he that puts all upon adventures, doth oftentimes 
break, and come to poverty; it is good therefore to guard 
adventures with certainties that may uphold losses. 
Monopolies, and coemption of wares for resale, where 
they are not restrained, are great means to enrich; 
especially if the party have intelligence what things are 
like to come into request, and to store himself before- 
hand. Riches gotten by service, though it be of the 
best rise, yet when they are gotten by flattery, feeding 
humors, and other servile conditions, they may be placed 
amongst the worst. As for fishing for testaments and 
executorships (as Tacitus saith of Seneca, ''Testamenta 
et orbos tanquam indagine capi"t), it is yet worse; by 
how much men submit themselves to meaner persons 
than in service. 

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for 
they despise them that despair of them; and none worse 

* In sudore, in the sweat of another's brow. 
t Testamenta, etc. Wills and trusteeships were pulled in by him 
as if with a net. 



FRANCIS BACON 269 

when they come to them. Be not penny-wise; riches 
have wings, and sometimes thej^ fly awaj'^ of themselves, 
sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more. 

Men leave their riches either to their kindred, or to 
the pubhc; and moderate portions prosper best in both. 
A great estate left to an heir is as a Im-e to all the birds 
of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the 
better stablished in years and judgment. Likewise glori- 
ous gifts and foundations are like sacrifices without salt; 
and but the painted sepulchres of alms, which soon will 
putrefy and corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure not 
thine advancements by quantity, but frame them by 
measure. And defer not charities till death; for certainly, 
if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so, is rather liberal 
of another man's than of his own. 

OF GREAT PLACE 

Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the 
sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of busi- 
ness; so as they have no freedom, neither in their per- 
sons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a 
strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to 
seek power over others and to lose power over a man's 
self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains 
men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and 
by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is 
slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least 
an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing. "Cum non sis 
qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere." * Nay, retire men 
cannot when they would, neither Avill they when it were 
reason, but are impatient of privateness, even in age and 
sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen 

* Cum non, etc. Since you are not what you were, there is no 
reason why you should wish to live. 



270 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby 
they offer age to scorn. Certainly, great persons had 
need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves 
happy, for if they judge by their own feeling they cannot 
find it; but if they think with themselves what other 
men think of them, and that other men would fain be as 
they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when 
perhaps they find the contrary within. For they are the 
first that find their own griefs, though they be the last 
that find their own faults. Certainly, men in great for- 
tunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in 
the puzzle of business they have no time to tend their 
health either of body or mind. " Illi mors gravis incubat, 
qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi." * 

In place there is license to do good and evil, whereof 
the latter is a curse; for in evil the best condition is not 
to will, the second not to can. But power to do good is 
the true and lawful end of aspiring. For good thoughts, 
though God accept them, yet toward men are little better 
than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that 
cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and 
commanding ground. Merit and good works is the end 
of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the ac- 
complishment of man's rest. For if a man can be par- 
taker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of 
God's rest. "Et conversus Deus, ut aspiceret opera, 
quse fecerunt manus suae, vidit quod omnia essent bona 
nimis, "t and then the Sabbath. 

In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best 
examples, for imitation is a globe of precepts. And after 



* Illi, etc. Death presses heavily upon him who, well known to 
all others, dies unknown to himself. 

t Et conversus, etc. And God turned to behold the works which 
his hands had wrought, and he saw that everything was very good. 
Genesis, i, 31. 



FRANCIS BACON 271 

a time set before thee thine own example, and examine 
thyself strictly, whether thou didst not best at first. 
Neglect not also the examples of those that have carried 
themselves ill in the same place, not to set off thyself by 
taxing their memory, but to direct thyseK what to avoid. 
Reform, therefore, without bravery or scandal of former 
times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself, as well 
to create good precedents as to follow them. Reduce 
things to the first institution, and observe wherein and 
how they have degenerated; but yet ask counsel of both 
times: of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter 
time what is fittest. Seek to make thy course regular, 
that men may know beforehand what they may expect; 
but be not too positive and peremptory, and express thy- 
self well when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve 
the right of thy place, but stir not questions of jurisdic- 
tion; and rather assume thy right in silence and de facto* 
than voice it with claims and challenges. Preserve like- 
wise the rights of inferior places, and think it more honor 
to direct in chief than to be busy in all. Embrace and 
invite helps and advices touching the execution of thy 
place, and do not drive away such as bring thee informa- 
tion, as meddlers, but accept of them in good part. 

The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corrup- 
tion, roughness, and facility. For delays: give easy ac- 
cess, keep times appointed, go through with that which 
is in hand, and interlace not business but of necessity. 
For corruption: do not only bind thine own hands, or 
thy servants' hands, from taking, but bind the hands of 
suitors also from offering. For integrity used doth the 
one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detes- 
tation of bribery, doth the other. And avoid not only 
the fault but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, 
and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth 
* De facto, as a matter of course. 



272 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

suspicion of corruption. Therefore always when thou 
changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and 
declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to 
change, and do not think to steal it. A servant or a 
favorite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of 
esteem, is commonly thought but a byway to close cor- 
ruption. For roughness: it is a needless cause of dis- 
content; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth 
hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave, 
and not taunting. As for facility,* it is worse than bribery. 
For bribes come but now and then; but if importunity or 
idle respects lead a man, he shall never be without. As 
Solomon saith: ''To respect persons is not good; for such 
a man will transgress for a piece of bread." f 

It is most true that was anciently spoken, "A place 
showeth the man"; and it showeth some to the better 
and some to the worse. "Omnium consensu, capax im- 
perii, nisi imperasset,"t saith Tacitus of Galba; but of 
Vespasian he saith, "Solus imperantium Vespasianus 
mutatus in melius." § Though the one was meant of suf- 
ficiency, the other of manners and affection. It is an 
assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom 
honor amends. For honor is, or should be, the place of 
virtue: and as in nature things move violently to their 
place, and calmly in their place; so virtue in ambition is 
violent, in authority settled and calm. 

All rising to great place is by a winding stair, and, if 
there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he 
is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. 
Use the memory of thy predecessor fairly and tenderly; 

* Facility, being too easy of access. 

t Proverbs, xxviii, 21. 

t Omnium, etc. By the consent of all he \ ? fit to govern, if he 
had not governed. 

§ Solus, etc. Of aU the emperors, Vespasian alone changed for 
ihe better after he came to the throne. 



FRANCIS BACON 273 

for if thou dost not, it is a debt will sure be paid when 
thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect them, 
and rather call them when they look not for it, than ex- 
clude them when they have reason to look to be called. 
Be not too sensible or too remembering of thy place in 
conversation and private answers to suitors; but let it 
rather be said, "When he sits in place he is another man." 

OF FRIENDSHIP 

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put 
more truth and untruth together in few words than in 
that speech, " Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either 
a wild beast or a god." For it is most true that a natural 
and secret hatred and aversation toward society in any 
man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most 
untrue that it should have any character at all of the 
divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in 
solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's 
self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have 
been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as 
Epimenides* the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles 
the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really 
in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the 
Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, 
and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, 
and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a 
tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin 
adage meeteth with it a little, "Magna civitas, magna 
solitudo"t; because in a great town friends are scattered, 
so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, 

* Epimenides is said to have fallen into a sleep which lasted fifty- 
seven years; Numa;' -^tended that he was instructed by a divine 
nymph; Empedocles declared himself to be immortal; Apollonius 
professed to be able to perform miracles. 

t Magna, etc. A great city is a great solitude. 



274 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, 
and aflfirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable 
solitude to want true friends, without which the world 
is but a wilderness. And even in this sense also of soli- 
tude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections 
is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not 
from humanity. 

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge 
of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions 
of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of 
stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the 
body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may 
take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flour 
of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain, but no 
receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you 
may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, 
and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a 
kind of civil shrift or confession. 

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great 
kings and monarchs do set upon the fruit of friendship 
whereof we speak; so great as they purchase it many 
times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. 
For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from 
that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this 
fruit except, to make themselves capable thereof, they 
raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and 
almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to 
inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such 
persons the name of favorites or privadoes, as if it were 
matter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name 
attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them 
"participes curarum," * for it is that which tieth the knot. 
And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak 
and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most 
* Sharers of cares. 



FRANCIS BACON 275 

politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to 
themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves 
have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call 
them in the same manner, using the word which is re- 
ceived between private men. 

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey, 
after surnamed the Great, to that height that Pompey 
vaunted himself for Sylla's overmatch. For when he had 
carried the consulship for a friend of his against the pur- 
suit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and 
began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, 
and in effect bade him be quiet, ''for that more men 
adored the sun rising than the sun setting." With Julius 
Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he 
set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after 
his nephew. And this was the man that had power with 
him to draw him forth to his death. For when Csesar 
would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill 
presages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man 
lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him 
he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his wife had 
dreamed a better dream. And it seemeth his favor was 
so great as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim 
in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him "venefica," 
witch, as if he had enchanted Csesar. Augustus raised 
Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height as, when he 
consulted with Maecenas about the marriage of his daugh- 
ter Julia, Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, "That he 
must either marry his daughter to Agrippa or take away 
his life; there was no third way, he had made him so 
great." With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had ascended to 
that height as they two were termed and reckoned as a 
pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith: "Hsec 
pro amicitia nostra non occultavi"*; and the whole senate 

* FIcEC, etc. These things, by reason of our friendship, I have not 
concealed from you. 



276 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

dedicated an altar to friendship, as to a goddess, in re- 
spect of the great dearness of friendship between them 
two. The like or more was between Septimius Severus 
and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry 
the daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain 
Plautianus in doing affronts to his son; and did write 
also in a letter to the senate by these words: "I love the 
man so well as I wish he may overlive me." Now, if 
these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, 
a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an 
abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of 
such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers 
of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly 
that they found their own felicity, though as great as 
ever happened to mortal men, but as a half-piece, except 
they might have a friend to make it entire. And yet, 
w^hich is more, they were princes which had wives, sons, 
nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort 
of friendship. 

It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of 
his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy; namely, that 
he would communicate his secrets with none, and least 
of all those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon 
he goeth on, and saith that toward his latter time "that 
closeness did impair, and a little perish his understanding." 
Surely Comineus might have made the same judgment 
also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Louis 
XI, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The 
parable of Pythagoras is dark but true: "Cor ne edito," 
eat not the heart. Certainly, if a man would give it a 
hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves 
unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is 
most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first- 
fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of 
a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects: for 



FRANCIS BACON 277 

it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there 
is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he 
joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to 
his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in 
truth, of operation upon a man's mind, of like virtue as 
the alchemists used to attribute to their stone for man's 
bod}^, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the 
good and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying 
in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in 
the ordinary course of nature. For in bodies, union 
strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action, and, on 
the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent im- 
pression; and even so is it of minds. 

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign 
for the understanding, as the first is for the affections. 
For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections 
from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the 
understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. 
Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, 
which a man receiveth from his friend; but before you 
come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind 
fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding 
do clarify and break up in the communicating and dis- 
coursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts more 
easily, he marshalleth them more orderly, he seeth how 
they look when they are turned into words; finally, he 
waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's 
discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said 
by Themistocles to the King of Persia, "That speech was 
like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the 
imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they 
lie but as in packs." Neither is this second fruit of friend- 
ship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to 
such friends as are able to give a man counsel; they in- 
deed are best, but even without that, a man learneth of 



278 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and 
whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. 
In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue 
or pictm-e, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. 
Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship com- 
plete, that other point which lieth more open, and falleth 
within vulgar observation: which is faithful counsel from 
a friend. Heraclitus saith well on one of his enigmas, 
"Dry light is ever the best." And certain it is, that the 
light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is 
drier and purer than that which cometh from his own 
understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and 
drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as 
much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, 
and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the 
counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no 
such flatterer as is a man's self; and there is no such 
remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a 
friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning man- 
ners, the other concerning business. For the first, the 
best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faith- 
ful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self 
to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing 
and corrosive. Reading good books of morality is a 
little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others is 
sometimes unproper for our case. But the best receipt 
(best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition 
of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross 
errors and extreme absurdities many, especially of the 
greater sort, do commit for want of a friend to tell them 
of them; to the great damage both of their fame and for- 
tune. For, as St. James saith, they are as men ''that 
look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their 
own shape and favor." * As for business, a man may 
* James, i, 23. 



FRANCIS BACON 279 

think if he will that two eyes see no more than one; or 
that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or 
that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over 
the four-and-twenty letters; or that a musket may be 
shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such 
other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in 
all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel is that 
which setteth business straight. And if any man think 
that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking 
counsel in one business of one man, and in another busi- 
ness of another man; it is well (that is to say, better per- 
haps than if he asked none at all), but he runneth two 
dangers. One, that he shall not be faithfully counselled: 
for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire 
friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed 
and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it. 
The other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and 
unsafe, though with good meaning, and mixed partly of 
mischief and partly of remedy. Even as if you would 
call a physician that is thought good for the cure of the 
disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your 
body; and therefore may put you in way for a present 
cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, 
and so cure the disease and kill the patient. But a friend 
that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate will beware 
by furthering any present business how he dasheth upon 
other inconvenience. And, therefore, rest not upon scat- 
tered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead than 
settle and direct. 

After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the 
affections, and support of the judgment) followeth the 
last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many 
kernels: I mean aid, and bearing a part in all actions and 
occasions. Here the best way to represent to life the 
manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many 



280 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

things there are which a man cannot do himself; and then 
it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients 
to say, "That a friend is another himself"; for that a 
friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, 
and die many times in desire of some things which they 
principally take to heart, — the bestowing of a child, the 
finishing of a work, or the like. If a man have a true 
friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those 
things will continue after him. So that a man hath, as 
it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, 
and that body is confined to a place; but where friend- 
ship is, all oflices of life are, as it were, granted to him and 
his deputy, for he may exercise them by his friend. How 
many things are there which a man cannot, with any face 
or comeliness say or do himself! A man can scarce 
allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; 
a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; 
and a number of the like. But all these things are grace- 
ful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's 
own. So again, a man's person hath many proper rela- 
tions which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to 
his son, but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to 
his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak 
as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the per- 
son. But to enumerate these things were endless. I 
have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his 
o^n part: if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 



Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) is noted as a historian and 
essayist. He was the son of a Scotch stone-mason of 
Ecclefechan. When, at fourteen, he was ready to enter 
college, he walked the eighty miles to Edinburgh to 
enter the university there. Most of his life was spent in 
London, and it was given entirely to literature, resulting 
in a long row of volumes. His first book, Sartor Resartus 
(The Tailor Re-tailored), was a curious setting forth of 
his philosophy of life, written in such an unusual style 
that it found few readers. His next book. The French 
Revolution, made him famous. For vivid description, 
picturesque characterization, and dramatic narrative, it 
stands alone among historical works. He also wrote biog- 
raphies of Cromwell, of John Sterling, and of Frederick 
the Great, and contributed to magazines a number of 
critical essays, including a famous paper on Burns. He 
delivered a course of lectures on great men, which was 
published under the title Heroes and Hero-Worship. This 
book and his French Revolution are the best known of his 
works. The selection here given is from Heroes and Hero- 
Worship, being a part of the lecture on "The Hero as 
Man of Letters." It shows the vigor of Carlyle's style, 
the intense earnestness of the man, and the originality 
of his thought. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 
(From Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lecture V) 

Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we 
call the disorganized condition of society: how ill many 
arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many 
powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, 
altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a com- 
plaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this 
of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as 
it were, the summary of all other disorganization; — a sort 
of heart, from which, and to which, all other confusion 
circulates in the world! Considering what Book-writers 
do in the world, and what the world does with Book- 
writers, I should say, it is the most anomalous thing the 
world at present has to show. — We should get into a sea 
far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account of 
this: but we must glance at it for the sake of our sub- 
ject. 

Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay 
in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made 
endowments, regulations; everywhere in the civilized 
world there is a Pulpit, environed with aU manner of 
complex dignified appurtenances and fmrtherances, that 
therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, 
address his fellow men. They felt that this was the most 
important thing; that without this there was no good 
thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs; beautiful 
to behold! But now with the art of Writing, with the 

283 



284 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

art of Printing, a total change has come over that busi- 
ness. The Writer of a Book, is not he a Preacher preach- 
ing not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to 
all men in all times and places? Surely it is of the last 
importance that he do his work right, whoever do it 
wrong; — that the eye report not falsely, for then all the 
other members are astray! Well; how he may do his 
work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is 
a point which no man in the world has taken the pains 
to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some 
money for his books, if lucky, he is of some importance; 
to no other man of any. Whence he came, whither he 
is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he might be 
furthered on his course, no one asks. He is an accident 
in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a 
world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the 
guidance or the misguidance ! 

Certainly the art of Writing is the most miraculous of 
all things man has devised. Odin's Runes * were the first 
form of the work of a Hero; Books, written words, are 
still miraculous Runes, the latest form! In Books lies 
the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible 
voice of the Past, when the body and material substance 
of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets 
and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, 
many-engined, — they are precious, great: but what do 
th^y become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, 
Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some 
ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: 
but the Books of Greece ! There Greece, to every thinker, 
still very literally lives; can be called up again into Ufe. 
No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Man- 
kind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in 

* Runes, a name given to the ancient Scandinavian alphabet, 
which according to tradition was given to mankind by the god Odin. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 285 

magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the 
chosen possession of men. 

Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were 
fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretched- 
est circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb 
and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the 
actual practical weddings and households of those fool- 
ish girls. So '■' Celia " felt, so '' Clifford " acted : the foolish 
Theorem of Life, stamped into those young brains, comes 
out as a solid Practice one day. Consider whether any 
Rune in the wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did 
such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books 
have done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at 
the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book, 
— the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending 
his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the 
wildernesses of Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, yet 
nothing is truer. With the art of Writing, of which Joint- 
ing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignifi- 
cant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind 
commenced. It related, with a wondrous new contiguity 
and perpetual closeness, the Past and Distant with the 
Present in time and place; all times and all places with 
this our actual Here and Now. All things were altered 
for men; all modes of important work of men: teaching, 
preaching, governing, and all else. 

To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a 
notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their 
existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the 
existence of Books. Universities arose while there were 
yet no Books procurable; while a man, for a single Book, 
had to give an estate of land. That, in those circum- 
stances, when a man had some knowledge to communi- 
cate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, 
face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to 



286 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to 
Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went 
to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. 
And now for any other teacher who had also something 
of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened : 
so many thousands eager to learn were already assem- 
bled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. 
For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever 
the better, the more teachers there came. It only needed 
now that the King took notice of this new phenomenon; 
combined or agglomerated the various schools into one 
school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and 
named it Universitas, or School of all Sciences: the Uni- 
versity of Paris, in its essential characters, was there. 
The model of all subsequent Universities; which down 
even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to 
found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of 
Universities. 

It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, 
facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the busi- 
ness from top to bottom were changed. Once invent 
Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or super- 
seded them ! The Teacher needed not now to gather 
men personally round him, that he might speak to them 
what he knew : print it in a Book, and all learners far and 
wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much 
more effectually to learn it ! — Doubtless there is still 
peculiar virtue in Speech; even Writers of Books may still, 
in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also, 
— witness our present meeting here ! * There is, one would 
say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a 
distinct province for Speech as well a^ for Writing and 
Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to 
Universities among others. But the limits of the two 
* This was originally given as a lecture. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 287 

have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much 
less put in practice; the University which would com- 
pletely take in that great new fact, of the existence of 
Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nine- 
teenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, 
has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all 
that a University, or final highest School can do for us, 
is still but what the first School began doing, — teach us 
to read. We learn to read, in various languages, in various 
sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner 
of Books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, 
even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves! It 
depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors 
have done their best for us. The true University of these 
days is a Collection of Books. 

But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 
changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the intro- 
duction of Books. The Church is the working recognized 
Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise 
teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no 
Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing or Print- 
ing, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method 
of performing this. But now with Books I — He that can 
write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the 
Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of 
All England? I many a time say, the writers of News- 
papers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these are the real 
working effective Church of a modern country. Nay, not 
only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too 
accomphshed by means of Printed Books? The noble 
sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in me- 
lodious words, which brings melody into our hearts, — is 
not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the nature 
of worship? There are many, in all countries, who, in 
this confused time, have no other method of worship. 



288 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

He who, in any way, shows us better than we knew before 
that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it 
us as an eflBuence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the 
handwriting^ made visible there, of the great Maker of 
the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with 
him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. 
How much more he who sings, who says, or in any way 
brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, dar- 
ings and endurances of a brother man! He has verily 
touched our hearts as with a live coal from the altar. Per- 
haps there is no worship more authentic. 

Literature, so far as it is Literatm-e, is an "apocalypse 
of Nature," a revealing of the "open secret." It may 
well enough be named, in Fichte's style, a "continuous 
revelation" of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and Com- 
mon. The Godlike does ever, in ver3^ truth, endure there; 
is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with vari- 
ous degrees of clearness: all true gifted Singers and Speak- 
ers are, consciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark 
stormful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and per- 
verse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery 
of a French sceptic, — his mockery of the False, a love and 
worship of the True. How much more the sphere- 
harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the cathedral 
music of a Milton ! They are something too, those hum- 
ble genuine lark notes of a Burns, — skylark, starting from 
the humble furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and 
singing to us so genuinely there ! For all true singing is 
of the nature of worship; as indeed all true working may 
be said to be, — whereof such singing is but the record, and 
fit melodious representation, to us. Fragments of a real 
"Church Liturgy" and "Body of Homilies," strangely 
disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering 
in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely 
call Literature ! Books are our Church too. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 289 

Or turning now to the Government of men. Witena- 
gemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The alBFairs 
of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what 
we were to do as a nation. But does not, though the name 
Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, 
everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive 
way, out of Parliament altogether? Burke said there 
were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' 
Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important 
far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty 
saying; it is a literal fact, — very momentous to us in these 
times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which 
comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equiva- 
lent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevi- 
table. Writing brings Printing; brings universal every- 
day extempore Printing as we see at present. Whoever 
can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a 
power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight 
in lawmaking, in all acts of authority. It matters not 
what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requi- 
site thing is, that he have a tongue which others will 
listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation 
is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democ- 
racy is virtually there. Add only, that whatsoever power 
exists will have itself, by and by, organized; working 
secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it 
will never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visi- 
ble to all. Democracy virtually extant will insist on be- 
coming palpably extant. 

On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, 
of the things which man can do or make here below, by 
far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the 
things we call Books ! Those poor bits of rag-paper with 
black ink on them; — from the Daily Newspaper to the 
sacred Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are 



290 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

they not doing ! — For indeed, whatever be the outward 
form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black 
ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's 
faculty that produces a Book? It is the Thought of man; 
the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all 
things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, 
is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with 
all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge 
immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, 
but millions of Thoughts made into One; — a huge, im- 
measurable Spirit of Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, 
smoke, dust. Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, 
Catherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was 
made but some man had to think of the making of that 
brick. — The thing we called "bits of paper with traces 
of black ink," is the 'purest embodiment of a Thought 
man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest 
and noblest. 

All this, of the importance and supreme importance of 
the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press 
is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the 
Senatus Academicus and much else, has been admitted 
for a good while; and recognized often enough, in late 
times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonder- 
ment. It seems to me, the Sentimental by and by will 
have to give place to the Practical. If Men of Letters 
are so incalculably influential, actually performing such 
work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, 
then I think we may conclude that Men of Letters will 
not always wander like unrecognized unregulated Ish- 
maelites among us ! Whatsoever thing, as I said above, 
has virtual unnoticed power will east off its wrappages, 
bandages, and step forth one day with palpably articu- 
lated, universally visible power. That one man wear the 
clothes and take the wages of a function which is done 



THOMAS CARLYLE 291 

by quite another: there can be no profit in this; this is 
not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the making of it 
right, — what a business, for long times to come! Sure 
enough, this that we call Organization of the Literary 
Guild is still a great way off, encumbered with all manner 
of complexities. If you asked me what were the best 
possible organization for the Men of Letters in modern 
society; the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, 
grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of their 
position and of the world's position, — I should beg to say 
that the problem far exceeded my faculty ! It is not one 
man's faculty; it is that of many successive men turned 
earnestly upon it, that will bring out even an approximate 
solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us 
could say. But if you ask, Which is the worst? I an- 
swer: This which we now have, that Chaos should sit 
umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or any good 
one, there is yet a long way. 



RALPH WALDO EIVIERSON 

SELF-RELIANCE 



Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), one of the famous 
New England group of writers, was the son of a Boston 
minister. He attended the Boston Latin School and Har- 
vard College, where he waited on table for his board. 
After graduation he taught school for a time, preached 
for a time, and then found his real vocation as lecturer 
and writer. His home was in Concord, a village near 
Boston. Here he spent his days quietly, the mornings 
in reading and writing, the afternoons in long walks, 
usually alone; the evenings with his family. At this time 
nearly every small town had its "lyceum," or course of 
lectures, every winter, and Emerson was much in demand 
as a lecturer. He gave courses on science, on biography, 
and on literature. Gradually his subjects became more 
general, such as Compensation, Heroism, Self-Reliance, 
Spiritual Laws. Then he began to pubUsh the substance 
of these lectures as books. In 1847 he was invited to 
England to lecture. Here he met Carlyle, Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, and other 
notable people. His impressions of England were pub- 
lished under the title English Traits. His other writ- 
ings are: Nature, Essays, First and Second Series, Poems, 
Representative Men, Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, 
Letters and Social Aims. His prose works are practically 
all essays, and are of the reflective type. They contain 
the mature wisdom of one who had read carefully and 
thought deeply. They are not easy reading; the thought 
is close-packed, and often the connection between one 
idea and the next is not evident, but one who reads slowly 
and attentively will be richly repaid. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

SELF-RELIANCE 

(From Essays, First Series) 

Ne te qusesiveris extra.* 

Man is his own star; and the soul that can 
Render an honest and a perfect man, 
Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
-Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher^s Honest Man's Fortune, 



Cast the bantling on the rocks. 
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, 
Wintered with the hawk and fox. 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 

— Emerson. 

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent 
painter which were original and not conventional. Always 
the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject 
be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more 
value than any thought they may contain. To believe 
your own thought, to believe that what is true for you 
in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. 
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal 
sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost — and 
our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets 
of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind 
is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, 

* Do not seek beyond thyself. 
295 



296 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

and Milton is that they set at naught books and tradi- 
tions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. 
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of 
light which flashes across his mind from within, more 
than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. 
Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it 
is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own 
rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain 
alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more 
affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide 
by our spontaneous impression with good-humored in- 
flexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on 
the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with 
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and 
felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with 
shame our own opinion from another. 

There is a time in every man's education when he ar- 
rives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imi- 
tation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for 
worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is 
full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him 
but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground 
which is given to him to till. The power which resides 
in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what 
that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has 
tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, 
makes much impression on him, and another none. It 
is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture 
in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray 
should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. 
Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his conces- 
sion. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of 
that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be 
safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it 
be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 297 

made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to 
exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when 
he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but 
what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no 
peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In 
the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; 
no invention, no hope. 

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, 
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of 
events. Great men have always done so, and confided 
themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying 
their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their 
heart, working through their hands, predominating in 
all their being. And we are now men, and must accept 
in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and 
not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards 
fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, 
pious aspirants to be noble clay; under the Almighty ef- 
fort let us advance on Chaos and the Dark. 

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in 
the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. 
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment 
because our arithmetic has computed the strength and 
means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their 
mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and 
when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. In- 
fancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one 
babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who 
prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and 
puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims 
not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think 
the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you 
and me. Hark ! in the next room who spoke so clear and 



298 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

emphatic? It seems he knows how to speak to his con- 
temporaries. Good Heaven ! it is he ! it is that very 
lump of bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has done 
nothing but eat when you were by, and now rolls out 
these words like bell strokes. It seems he knows how to 
speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he 
will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and 
would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to 
conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. 
How is a boy the master of society; independent, irre- 
sponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and 
facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their 
merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, 
interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers 
himself never about consequences, about interests; he 
gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court 
him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were 
clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he 
has once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed 
person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hun- 
dreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. 
There is no Lethe * for this. Ah, that he could pass again 
into his neutral, godlike independence! Who can thus 
lose all pledge and, having observed, observe again from 
the same unaffected, unbiassed, unbribable, unaffrighted 
innocence, must always be formidable, must always en- 
gage the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an im- 
mortal youth the force would be felt. He would utter 
opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be 
not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the 
ear of men and put them in fear. 

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but 

* Lethe. In Greek mythology, Lethe was a river in Hades. Those 
who drank of its waters lost all memory of their past Mves. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 299 

they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood 
of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock 
company, in which the members agree, for the better 
securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender 
the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most 
request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It 
loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. 
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He 
who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered 
by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be good- 
ness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our 
own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have 
the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which 
when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued 
adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear 
old doctrines of the church. On my saying. What have 
I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I Uve wholly 
from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses 
may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They 
do not seem to me to be such, but if I am the devil's child, 
I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred 
to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but 
names very readily transferable to that or this; the only 
right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong 
what is against it. A man is to carry himseK in the pres- 
ence of all opposition as if everything were titular and 
ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily 
we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and 
dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken indi- 
vidual affects and sways me more than is right ! I ought 
to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all 
ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, 
shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bounti- 
ful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last 



300 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

news from Barbadoes,* why should I not say to him, "Go 
love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured 
and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your 
hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tender- 
ness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar 
is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such 
greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of 
love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else 
it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as 
the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules 
and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and 
brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the 
lintels of the door post. Whim. I hope it is somewhat 
better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day 
in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I 
seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not 
tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to 
put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? 
I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the 
dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not 
belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a 
class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am 
bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; 
but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education 
at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the 
vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the 
thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with 
shame I sometime succumb and give the dollar, it is a 
wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood 
to withhold. 

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the excep- 
tion than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. 
Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of 

* At the time this was written, slavery still existed in the British 
West Indies. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 301 

courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in ex- 
piation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works 
are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in 
the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. 
Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, 
but to hve. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is 
for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it 
should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, 
than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish 
it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleed- 
ing. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a 
battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence 
that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man 
to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no differ- 
ence whether I do or forbear those actions which are 
reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a priv- 
ilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as 
my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my 
own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secon- 
dary testimony. 

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the 
people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and 
in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction 
between greatness and meanness. It is the harder be- 
cause you will always find those who think they know 
what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy 
in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy 
in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is 
he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect 
sweetness the independence of solitude. 

The objection to conforming to usages that have be- 
come dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses 
your time and blurs the impression of j^our character. If 
you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible 
Society, vote with a great party either for the Govern- 



302 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

ment or against it, spread your table like base house- 
keepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to de- 
tect the precise man you are. And of course so much 
force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your 
thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you 
shall reinforce yom-self. A man must consider what a 
blindman's buff is this game of conformity. If I know 
your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher 
announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of 
the institutions of his church. Do I not know before- 
hand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous 
word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of 
examining the grounds of the institution he will do no 
such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself 
not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a 
man, but as a parish minister ? He is a retained attorney, 
and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. 
Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another 
handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of 
these communities of opinion. This conformity makes 
them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, 
but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not 
quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not 
the real four: so that every word they say chagrins us 
and we know not where to begin to set them right. Mean- 
time nature is not slow to equip us in the prison uniform 
of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one 
cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest 
asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in 
particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the 
general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the 
forced smile which we put on in company where we do 
not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not 
interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but 
moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 303 

outline of the face, and make the most disagreeable sen- 
sation; a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave 
young man will suffer twice. 

For non-conformity the world whips you with its dis- 
pleasure. And therefore a man must know how to esti- 
mate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him 
in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this 
aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like 
his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; 
but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, 
have no deep cause — disguise no god, but are put on and 
off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is 
the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that 
of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a 
firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the 
cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, 
for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. 
But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the 
people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are 
aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at 
the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs 
the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike 
as a trifle of no concernment. 

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our 
consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because 
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our 
orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint 
them. 

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? 
Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, 
lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or 
that public place? Suppose you should contradict your- 
self; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never 
to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of 
pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the 



304 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. 
Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics you have 
denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout 
motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, 
though they should clothe God with shape and color. 
Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the 
harlot, and flee. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the 
wall. Out upon j^our guarded lips ! Sew them up with 
packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what 
you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and 
to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words 
again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. 
Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be 
misunderstood ! Misunderstood ! It is a right fool's 
word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythag- 
oras* was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and 
Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and 
every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be 
great is to be misunderstood. 

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies 
of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the 
inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in 
the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you 
gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or 
Alexandrianf stanza; — ^read it forward, backward, or 

* Pythagoras and Socrates were Greek philosophers; one was ban- 
ished; the other was unjustly sentenced to death. Copernicus and 
Galileo were famous astronomers. Copernicus established the theory 
that the earth revolved about the sun, but for fear of persecution 
dared not announce his discovery; Galileo was imprisoned for pub- 
lishing his discoveries. 

t Alexandrian stanza, a Une of twelve syllables. Emerson prob- 
ably meant the palindrome, which reads the same backward or for- 
ward, as "Madam, I'm Adam." 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 305 

across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing con- 
trite wood life which God allows me, let me record day 
by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, 
and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though 
I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of 
pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow 
over my window should interweave that thread or straw 
he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what 
we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine 
that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt 
actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath 
every moment. 

Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever 
variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in 
their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmoni- 
ous, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost 
sight of when seen at a little distance, at a little height of 
thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage 
of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This 
is only microscopic criticism. See the line from a suffi- 
cient distance, and it straightens itself to the average 
tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and 
will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity 
explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already 
done singly will justify you now. Greatness always ap- 
peals to the future. If I can be great enough now to do 
right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right be- 
fore as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. 
Always scorn appearances and you always may. The 
force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days 
of virtue work their health into this. What makes the 
majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which 
so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train 
of great days and victories behind. There they all stand 
and shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is 



306 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

attended as by a visible escort of angels to every man's 
eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's 
voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America 
into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is 
no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship 
it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay 
it homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage, 
but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an 
old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. 
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conform- 
ity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and 
ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, 
let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow 
and apologize nevermore. A great man is coming to 
eat at my house. I do not wish to please him: I wish 
that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for 
humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would 
make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth 
mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and 
hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact 
which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great 
responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves 
a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, 
but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. 
He measures you and all men and all events. You are 
constrained to accept his standard. Ordinarily, every- 
body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some 
other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing 
else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must 
be so much that he must make all circumstances indiffer- 
ent — put all means into the shade. This all great men 
are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, and 
an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time 
fuUy to accomplish his thought; — and posterity seem to 
follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar is born. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 307 

and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is 
born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his 
genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible 
of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one 
man; as, the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; 
Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, 
Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history re- 
solves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout 
and earnest persons. 

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under 
his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down 
with the air of a charity boy, a bastard, or an interloper 
in the world which exists for him. But the man in the 
street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to 
the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, 
feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a 
statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, 
much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 
"Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for his 
notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out 
and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; 
it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to 
praise. That popular fable* of the sot who was picked 
up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, 
washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on 
his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the 
duke, and assured that he had been insane — owes its 
popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state 
of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and 
then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a 
true prince. 

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history 

* The story is in the Arabian Nights, under the title "Abou Has- 
san, or the Sleeper Awakened." It is also used by Shakespeare in 
the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. 



308 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. King- 
dom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocab- 
ulary than private John and Edward in a small house 
and common day's work: but the things of life are the 
same to both: the sum total of both is the same. Why 
all this deference to Alfred and Scanderberg* and Gus- 
tavus? t Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out 
virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to- 
day as followed their public and renowned steps. When 
private men shall act with original views, the lustre wiU 
be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gen- 
tlemen. 

The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, who 
have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been 
taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that 
is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which 
men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or 
the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of 
his own, make his own scale of men and things and re- 
verse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with 
honor, and represent the Law in his person, was the 
hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their con- 
sciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of 
every man. 

The magnetism which all original action exerts is ex- 
plained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who 
is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a 
universal reliance may be grounded ? What is the nature 
and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax,! 

* Scanderberg, an Albanian leader of the fifteenth century who 
successfully defended his country against Turkey. 

t Gustavus, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who defeated Russia 
in the Thirty Years' War. 

X Parallax, a reference to the method of calculating the distance 
of the stars. A star without parallax would be so remote that its 
distance could not be calculated. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 309 

without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty 
even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark 
of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that 
source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, 
and the essence of life, which we call Spontaneity or In- 
stinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, 
whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, 
the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things 
find their common origin. For the sense of being which 
in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not 
diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, 
from man, but one with them and proceedeth obviously 
from the same source whence their life and being also 
proceedeth. We first share the life by which things exist, 
and afterward see them as appearances in nature and 
forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the foun- 
tain of action and the fountain of thought. Here are 
the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, 
of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied with- 
out impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense 
intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and re- 
ceivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we 
discern truth, Ave do nothing of ourselves, but allow a 
passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if 
we seek to pry into the soul that causes, — all metaphysics, 
all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is 
all we can affirm. Every man discerns between the vol- 
untary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions. 
And to his involuntary perceptions he knows a perfect 
respect is due. He may err in the expression of them, 
but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, 
not to be disputed. All my wilful actions and acquisitions 
are but roving; — the most trivial revery, the faintest 
native emotion, are domestic and divine. Thoughtless 
people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions 



310 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do 
not distinguish between perception and notion. They 
fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But per- 
ception is not whimsical, but fatal.* If I see a trait, my 
children will see it after me, and in course of time all 
mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen 
it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact 
as the sun. 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure 
that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be 
that when God speaketh he should communicate, not 
one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his 
voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from 
the centre of the present thought; and new date and new 
create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and re- 
ceives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away, — 
means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and 
absorbs past and future into the present hour. All 
things are made sacred by relation to it, — one thing as 
much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre 
by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty and 
particular miracles disappear. This is and must be. If 
therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and 
carries you backward to the phraseology of some old 
mouldered nation in another country, in another world, 
believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which 
is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than 
the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? 
Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries 
are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the 
soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which 
the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; 
where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and 
an injury if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue 
or parable of my being and becoming. 

* Fatal, here meaning ordained by fate. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 311 

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; 
he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint 
or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the 
blowing rose. These roses under my window make no 
reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for 
what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no 
time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in 
every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has 
burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is 
no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature 
is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. 
There is no time to it. But man postpones or remem- 
bers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted 
eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that sur- 
round him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He 
cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature 
in the present, above time. 

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong in- 
tellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the 
phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or 
Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few 
texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat 
by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as 
they grow older, of the men of talents and character they 
chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words 
they spoke; afterward, when they come into the point of 
view which those had who uttered these sayings, they 
understand them and are willing to let the words go; for 
at any time they can use words as good when occasion 
comes. So was it with us, so will it be, if we proceed. 
If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the 
strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. 
When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburthen 
the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When 
a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the 
murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. 



312 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

And now at last the highest truth on this subject re- 
mains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we 
say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That 
thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, 
is this. When good is near you, when you have life in 
yourself, — it is not by any known or appointed way; you 
shall not discern the footprints of any other; you shall 
not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; — 
the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange 
and new. It shall exclude all other being. You take 
the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever 
existed are its fugitive ministers. There shall be no fear 
in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It asks noth- 
ing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We are then 
in vision. There is nothing that can be called gratitude, 
nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. It 
seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a perceiving 
that Truth and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tran- 
quillity out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast 
spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast 
intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. 
This which I think and feel underlay that former state 
of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present 
and will always all circumstances, and what is called life 
and what is called death. 

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases 
in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of tran- 
sition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the 
gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world 
hates, that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades 
the past; turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a 
shame; confounds the saint with the rogue; shoves Jesus 
and Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate of self- 
reliance ? Inasmuch as the soul is present there will be 
power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 313 

poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that 
which relies because it works and is. Who has more soul 
than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. 
Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. 
Who has less I rule with like facility. We fancy it rhet- 
oric when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet 
see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company 
of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law 
of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, 
kings, rich men, poets, who are not. 

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on 
this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever- 
blessed One. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the 
reality. All things real are so by so much virtue as they 
contain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, 
eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage 
my respect as examples of the soul's presence and impure 
action. I see the same law working in nature for con- 
servation and growth. The poise of a planet, the bended 
tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital re- 
sources of every animal and vegetable, are also demon- 
strations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying 
soul. All history, from its highest to its trivial passages 
is the various record of this power. 

Thus all concentrates; let us not rove; let us sit at 
home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the in- 
truding rabble of men and books and institutions by a 
simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the 
shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our 
simphcity judge them, and our docility to our own law 
demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside 
our native riches. 

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe 
of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, to 
put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but 



314 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of men. 
We must go alone. Isolation must precede true society. 
I like the silent church before the service begins better 
than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste 
the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanc- 
tuary. So let us always sit. Why should we assume the 
faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because 
they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same 
blood? All men have my blood and I have all men's. 
Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to 
the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation 
must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be 
elevation. At times the Whole world seems to be in con- 
spiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, 
client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at 
once at thy closet door and say, "Come out unto us." — 
Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; 
stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a mo- 
ment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting 
appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their con- 
fusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them 
by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but 
through my act. "What we love, that we have; but by 
desire we bereave ourselves of the love." 

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience 
and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us 
enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, 
courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is 
to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. 
Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live 
no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiv- 
ing people with whom we converse. Say to them, O 
father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have 
lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward 
I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that hence- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 315 

forward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will 
have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to 
nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the 
chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must 
fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from 
your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break my- 
self any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for 
what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will 
still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. 
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust 
that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before 
the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the 
heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you 
are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical 
attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth 
with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. 
I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike 
your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we 
have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound 
harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by 
your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth 
it will bring us out safe at last. — But so may you give 
these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and 
my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons 
have their moments of reason, when they look out into 
the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and 
do the same thing. 

The populace think that your rejection of popular 
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere anti- 
nomianism;* and the bold sensualist will use the name of 
philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of conscious- 
ness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the 
other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil 

* Antinomianism, the doctrine that one may be saved by faith, 
regardless of his disobedience of the moral law. 



316 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

your round of duties by clearing youi'self in the direct, 
or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satis- 
fied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, 
town, cat and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. 
But I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve 
me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect 
circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that 
are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it 
enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any 
one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its com- 
mandment one day. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him who 
has cast off the common motives of humanity and has 
ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be 
his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in 
good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a 
simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity 
is to others. 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
called by distinction society, he will see the need of these 
ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn 
out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. 
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, 
and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and 
perfect persons. We want men and women who shall 
renovate life and our social state, but we see that most 
natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, 
have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. 
Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, 
our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but so- 
ciety has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. The 
rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they 
lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 317 

is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our col- 
leges, and is not installed in an office within one year 
afterward, in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, 
it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in 
being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. 
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in 
turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, ped- 
dles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to 
Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive 
years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a 
hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his 
days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," 
for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He 
has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a stoic 
arise who shall reveal the resources of man and tell men 
they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach 
themselves; that with the exercise of self -trust, new powers 
shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to 
shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed 
of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from 
himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and cus- 
toms out of the window, — we pity him no more but thank 
and revere him; — and that teacher shall restore the life 
of man to splendor and make his name dear to all History. 

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance — a new 
respect for the divinity in man — must work a revolution 
in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; 
in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of 
living; their association; in their property; in their spec- 
ulative views. 

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That 
which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and 
manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign 
addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses 
itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and 



318 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a par- 
ticular commodity — anything less than all good, is vicious. 
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of Ufe from the 
highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding 
and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing 
his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private 
end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not 
unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man 
is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see 
prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling 
in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling 
with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard through- 
out nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletch- 
er's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of 
the god Audate, replies, 

His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
Our valors are our best gods. 

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Dis- 
content is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. 
Regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer; 
if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins 
to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come 
to them who weep fooHshly and sit down and cry for 
company, instead of imparting to them truth and health 
in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in com- 
munication with the soul. The secret of fortune is joy 
in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is 
the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. 
Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow 
with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces 
him because he did not need it. We solicitously and 
apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held 
on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods 
love him because men hated him. "To the persevering 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 319 

mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are 
swift." 

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their 
creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those 
fooHsh Israelites, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die. 
Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey." * 
Everywhere I am bereaved of meeting God in my brother, 
because he has shut his own temple doors and recites 
fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's 
God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it 
prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke,t 
a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it im- 
poses its classification on other men, and lo ! a new sys- 
tem. In proportion always to the depth of the thought, 
and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings 
within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly 
is this apparent in cieeds and churches, which are also 
classifications of some powerful mind acting on the great 
elemental thought of Duty and man's relation to the 
Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgi- 
anism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating 
everything to the new terminology that a girl does who 
has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new 
seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the 
pupil will feel a real debt to the teacher — will find his 
intellectual power has grown by the study of his writings. 
This will continue until he has exhausted his master's 
mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classification is 
idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily ex- 
haustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to 
their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the uni- 

* Exodus, 20, 19. 

t Locke and Bentheim were English philosophers ; Lavoisier a 
French chemist who discovered the composition of water; Hutton 
was a Scotch geologist; Spurzheim, a German who put forth the 
system of phrenology. 



320 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

verse; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on 
the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how 
you aliens have any right to see — how j^ou can see; "It 
must be somehow that you stole the light from us." 
They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, in- 
domitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. 
Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are 
honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will 
be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and 
vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, 
million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the uni- 
verse as on the first morning. 

2. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of Travel- 
ling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains for 
all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, 
or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by 
rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by 
sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. 
In manly hours we feel that duty is our place and that 
the merry men of circumstance should follow as they 
may. The soul is no traveller: the wise man stays at 
home with the soul, and when his necessities, his duties, 
on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign 
lands, he is at home still and is not gadding abroad from 
himself, and shall make men sensible by the expression 
of his countenance that he goes the missionary of wisdom 
and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and 
not like an interloper or a valet. 

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation 
of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benev- 
olence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not 
go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater 
than he knows. He who travels to be amused or to get 
somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from 
himself and grows old even in youth among old things. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 321 

In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become 
old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. 

Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first 
journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home 
I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated 
with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, 
embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake 
up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the 
sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek 
the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated 
with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. 
My giant goes with me wherever I go. 

3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom 
of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual 
action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal 
system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds 
travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We 
imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the 
mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our 
shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opin- 
ions, om- tastes, our whole minds, lean, and follow the 
Past and the Distant, as the eyes of a maid follow her 
mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have 
flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought 
his model. It was an application of his own thought to 
the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. 
And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? 
Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint 
expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American 
artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to 
be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the 
length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and 
form of the government, he will create a house in which 
all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and senti- 
ment will be satisfied also. 



322 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you 
can present every moment with the cumulative force of 
a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of 
another you have only an extemporaneous half-posses- 
sion. That which each can do best, none but his Maker 
can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, 
till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master 
who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the 
master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washing- 
ton, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is an 
unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part 
he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the 
great man imitates in the original crisis when he per- 
forms a great act, I will tell him who else than himself 
can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the 
study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee 
and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. 
There is at this moment, there is for me an utterance 
bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, 
or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, 
but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, 
all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign 
to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patriarchs 
say, surely I can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; 
for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. 
Dwell up there in the simple and noble regions of thy Hfe, 
obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld 
again. 

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, 
so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves 
on the improvement of society, and no man improves. 

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent, 
like the workers of a treadmill. It undergoes continual 
changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 323 

it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. 
For everything that is given something is taken. Society 
acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a con- 
trast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking 
American, with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange 
in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose prop- 
erty is a club, a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth 
of a shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the 
two men and you shall see that his aboriginal strength 
the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, 
strike the savage with a broadax and in a day or two 
the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow 
into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white 
to his grave. 

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the 
use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks 
so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva 
watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. 
A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure 
of the information when he wants it, the man in the street 
does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does 
not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole 
bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. 
His note-books impair his memory: his libraries overload 
his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of acci- 
dents; and it may be a question whether machinery does 
not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement 
some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in establish- 
ments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every 
Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Chris- 
tian? 

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than 
in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are 
now than ever were. A singular equality may be ob- 
served between the great men of the first and of the last 



324 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy 
of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men 
than Plutarch's* heroes, three or four and twenty cen- 
turies ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, 
Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they 
leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be 
called by their name, but be wholly his own man, and in 
his turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions 
of each period are only its costume and do not invigorate 
men. The harm of the improved machinery may com- 
pensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so 
much in their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and 
Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of 
science and art. Gahleo, with an opera-glass, discovered 
a more splendid series of facts than any one since. Co- 
lumbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It 
is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of 
means and machinery which were introduced with loud 
laudation a few years or centuries before. The great 
genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the im- 
provements of the art of war among the triumphs of sci- 
ence, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, 
which consisted of falling back on naked valor and dis- 
encumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impos- 
sible to make a perfect army, says Las Cases, "without 
abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries and car- 
rialges, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the sol- 
dier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand- 
mill and bake his bread himself." 

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the 
water of which it is composed does not. The same par- 
ticle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity 

* Plutarch, a Greek historian who wrote the hves of illustrious 
Greeks and Romans. The names following are those of great states- 
men and philosophers of whom he wrote. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 325 

is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation 
to-day, next year die, and their experience dies with them. 
And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance 
on governments which protect it, is the want of self- 
reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and 
at things so long that they have come to esteem what they 
call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned and 
civil institutions, as guards of property, and they deprecate 
assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults 
on property. They measure their esteem of each other 
by what each has, and not by what each is. But a culti- 
vated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of 
what he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially 
he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental, came 
to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels 
that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no 
root in him, and merely lies there because no revolution 
or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, 
does always by necessity acquire, and what the man 
acquires, is permanent and living property, which does 
not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or 
fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews 
itself wherever the man is put. "Thy lot or portion of 
life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; there- 
fore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence 
on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for 
numbers. The political parties meet in numerous con- 
ventions; the greater the concourse and with each new 
uproar of announcement. The delegation from Essex! 
The Democrats from New Hampshire ! The Whigs of 
Maine ! the young patriot feels himself stronger than be- 
fore by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like man- 
ner the reformers summon conventions and vote and 
resolve in multitude. But not so O friends ! will the God 
deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely 



326 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from himself 
all external support and stands alone that I see him to 
be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit 
to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask 
nothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only 
firm column must presently appear the upholder of all 
that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is in 
the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for 
good out of him and elsewhere, and, so perceiving, throws 
himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, 
works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is 
stronger than a man who stands on his head. 

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble 
with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. 
But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal 
with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the 
Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel 
of Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A 
political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick 
or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite 
external event raises your spirits, and you think good 
days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can 
never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. 
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 

AMERICAN AND BRITON 



John Galsworthy (1867 ), one of the most significant 

of EngUsh writers of to-day, was born at Coombe, Surrey, 
of an old English family, and was educated at Harrow 
and at Oxford. After several years spent in travel, he re- 
turned to England and began his literary work. He is 
noted as a novehst, dramatist, and essayist. His novels 
deal with contemporary English life; the best known of 
these are The Man of Property, Fraternity, The Dark Flower, 
The Freelands, and Saint's Progress. He visited America 
in 1918, delivering lectures on literature, which were pub- 
lished as Addresses in America. He is among the success- 
ful dramatists of to-day. His plays often present some 
problem of the time, as Strife, which dramatizes the con- 
flict between employer and employee, with a strike as the 
chief incident; or Justice, which deals with our methods 
of punishment. Other plays are: The Silver Box, Joy, 
The Little Dream, The Pigeon, The Eldest Son, The Fu- 
gitive, The Moh, A Bit o' Love, The Skin Game. Many of 
these have been produced in America. His essays in- 
clude four volumes, A Motley, The Inn of Tranquillity, 
A Sheaf, and Another Sheaf. 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 

AMERICAN AND BRITON 

(From Another Sheaf) 

On the mutual understanding of each other by Britons 
and Americans the future happiness of nations depends 
more than on any other world cause. 

I have never held a whole-hearted brief for the British 
character. There is a lot of good in it, but much which 
is repellent. It has a kind of deliberate unattractive- 
ness, setting out on its journey with the words: "Take 
me or leave me." One may respect a person of this sort, 
but it is difficult either to know or to like him. I am 
told that an American oflacer said recently to a British 
staff officer in a friendly voice: "So we're going to clean 
up Brother Boche together!" and the British staff officer 
replied "Really!" No wonder Americans sometimes 
say: "I've got no use for those fellows." 

The world is consecrate to strangeness and discovery, 
and the attitude of mind concreted in that "Really!" 
seems unforgivable, till one remembers that it is manner 
rather than matter which divides the hearts of American 
and Briton. 

In a huge, still half-developed country, where every 
kind of national type and habit comes to run a new thread 
into the rich tapestry of American hfe and thought, 
people must find it almost impossible to conceive the life 
of a little old island where traditions persist generation 
after generation without anything to break them up; 
where blood remains undoctored by new strains; de- 
meanor becomes crystallized for lack of contrasts* and 

329 



330 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

manner gets set like a plaster mask. The English man- 
ner of to-day, of what are called the classes, is the growth 
of only a centm'y or so. There was probably nothing at 
all like it in the days of Elizabeth or even of Charles II. 
The English manner was still racy when the inhabitants 
of Virginia, as we are told, sent over to ask that there 
might be despatched to them some hierarchical assistance 

for the good of their souls, and were answered: "D n 

yom* souls, grow tobacco!" The English manner of 
to-day could not even have come into its own when that 
epitaph of a lady, quoted somewhere by Gilbert Murray, 
was written: "Bland, passionate, and deeply religious, 
she was second cousin to the Earl of Leitrim; of such are 
the Kingdom of Heaven." About that gravestone motto 
was a certain lack of the self-consciousness which is now 
the foremost characteristic of the English manner. 

But this British self-consciousness is no mere fluffy 
gaucherie* it is oiu* special form of what Germans would 
call "Kultur." Behind every manifestation of thought 
or emotion the Briton retains control of self, and is think- 
ing: "That's all TU let them see"; even: "That's all I'll 
let myself feel." This stoicism is good in its refusal to 
be foundered; bad in that it fosters a narrow outlook; 
starves emotion, spontaneity, and frank sympathy; de- 
stroys grace and what one may describe roughly as the 
lovable side of personality. The English hardly ever say 
just what comes into their heads. What we call "good 
form," the unwritten law which governs certain classes of 
the Briton, savors of the dull and glacial; but there lurks 
within it a core of virtue. It has grown up like callous 
shell round two fine ideals — suppression of the ego lest 
it trample on the corns of other people, and exaltation of 
the maxim: "Deeds before words." Good form, like any 
other religion, starts well with some ethical truth, but 
* Gaucherie, awkwardness, stiffness. 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 331 

soon gets commonized and petrified till we can hardly 
trace its origin, and watch with surprise its denial and 
contradiction of the root idea. 

Without doubt good form had become a kind of disease 
in England. A French friend told me how he witnessed 
in a Swiss hotel the meeting between an Englishwoman 
and her son, whom she had not seen for two years; she 
was greatly affected — by the fact that he had not brought 
a dinner jacket. The best manners are no "manners," 
or at all events no mannerisms; but many Britons who 
have even attained to this perfect purity are yet not free 
from the paralytic effects of "good form"; are still self- 
conscious in the depths of their souls, and never do or 
say a thing without trying not to show what they are 
feeling. All this guarantees a certain decency in life; 
but in intimate intercourse with people of other nations 
who have not this particular cult of suppression, we Eng- 
lish disappoint, and jar, and often irritate. Nations have 
their differing forms of snobbery. At one time the Eng- 
lish all wanted to be second cousins to the Earl of Leitrim, 
like that lady bland and passionate. Nowadays it is not 
so simple. The Earl of Leitrim has become etherealized. 
We no longer care how a fellow is born so long as he be- 
haves as the Earl of Leitrim would have, never makes 
himself conspicuous or ridiculous, never shows too much 
what he's really feeling, never talks of what he's going 
to do, and always "plays the game." The cult is centred 
in our public schools* and universities. 

At a very typical and honored old public school the 
writer of this essay passed on the whole a happy time; 
but what a curious life, educationally speaking! We 
lived rather like young Spartans; and were not encour- 

* Public school, in England, means a private school where the sons 
of the well-to-do and the nobility prepare for college. They corre- 
spond to Lawrenceville, Exeter, and other academies in America. 



332 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

aged to think, imagine, or see anything that we learned 
in relation to life at large. It's very difficult to teach 
boys, because their chief object in life is not to be taught 
anything, but I should say we were crammed, not taught 
at all. Living as we did the herd-life of boys with little 
or no intrusion from om^ elders, and they men who had 
been brought up in the same way as ourselves, we were 
debarred from any real interest in philosophy, history, 
art, literature and music, or any advancing notions in 
social life or politics. I speak of the generality, not of the 
few black swans among us. We were reactionaries almost 
to a boy. I remember one summer term Gladstone came 
down to speak to us, and we repaired to the Speech Room 
with white collars and dark hearts, muttering what we 
would do to that Grand Old Man if we could have our 
way. But he contrived to charm us, after all, till we 
cheered him vociferously. In that queer life we had all 
sorts of unwritten rules of suppression. You must turn 
up your trousers; must not go out with your umbrella 
rolled. Your hat must be worn tilted forward; you must 
not walk more than two abreast till you reached a cer- 
tain form, nor be enthusiastic about anything, except 
such a supreme matter as a drive over the pavilion at 
cricket, or a run the whole length of the ground at foot- 
ball. You must not talk about yourself or your home 
people, and for any punishment you must assume com- 
plete indifference. 

I dwell on these trivialities because every year thou- 
sands of British boys enter these mills which grind ex- 
ceeding small, and because these boys constitute in after- 
life the great majority of the official, military, academic, 
professional, and a considerable proportion of the busi- 
ness classes of Great Britain. They become the English- 
men who say: "Really!" and they are for the most part 
'the Englishmen who travel and reach America. The 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 333 

great defense I have always heard put up for our pubHc 
schools is that they form character. As oatmeal is sup- 
posed to form bone in the bodies of Scotsmen, so our 
public schools are supposed to form good, sound moral 
fibre in British boys. And there is much in this plea. 
The life does make boys enduring, self-reliant, good- 
tempered and honorable, but it most carefully endeavors 
to destroy all original sin of individuality, spontaneity, 
and engaging freakishness. It implants, moreover, in the 
great majority of those who have lived it the mental atti- 
tude of that swell, who when asked where he went for his 
hats, replied: "Blank's, of course. Is there another fel- 
low's?" 

To know all is to excuse all — to know all about the 
bringing up of English public school boys makes one 
excuse much. The atmosphere and tradition of those 
places is extraordinarily strong, and persists through all 
modern changes. Thirty-seven years have gone since I 
was a new boy, but cross-examining a young nephew who 
left not long ago, I found almost precisely the same fea- 
tures and conditions. The war, which has changed so 
much of our social life, will have some, but no very great, 
effect on this particular institution. The boys still go 
there from the same kind of homes and preparatory 
schools and come under the same kind of masters. And 
the traditional unemotionalism, the cult of a dry and 
narrow stoicism, is rather fortified than diminished by 
the times we live in. 

Our universities, on the other hand, are now mere 
ghosts of their old selves. At a certain old college in 
Oxford, last term, they had only two English students. 
In the chapel under the Joshua Reynolds window, through 
which the sun was shining, hung a long "roll of honor," a 
hundred names and more. In the college garden an open- 
air hospital was ranged under the old city wall, where we 



334 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

used to climb and go wandering in the early summer 
mornings after some all-night spree. Down on the river 
the empty college barges lay void of life. From the top 
of one of them an aged custodian broke into words : " Ah ! 
Oxford'll never be the same again in my time. Why, 
who's to teach 'em rowin' ? When we do get undergrads 
again, who's to teach 'em ? All the old ones gone, killed, 
wounded and that. No! Rowin'll never be the same 
again — not in my time." That was the tragedy of the 
war for him. Our universities will recover faster than 
he thinks, and resume the care of our particular "Kultur," 
and cap the products of our public schools with the Ox- 
ford accent and the Oxford manner. 

An acute critic tells me that Americans reading such 
deprecatory words as these by an Englishman about his 
country's institutions would say that this is precisely an 
instance of what an American means by the Oxford man- 
ner. Americans whose attitude toward their own coun- 
try is that of a lover to his lady or a child to its mother, 
cannot — he says — understand how Englishmen can be 
critical of their own country, and yet love her. Well, 
the Englishman's attitude to his country is that of a man 
to himself, and the way he runs her down is but a part 
of that special English bone-deep self-consciousness. 
Englishmen (the writer amongst them) love their country 
as much as the French love France and the Americans 
Arherica; but she is so much a part of them that to speak 
well of her is like speaking well of themselves, which they 
have been brought up to regard as "bad form," When 
Americans hear Englishmen speaking critically of their 
own country, let them note it for a sign of complete 
identification with that country rather than of detach- 
ment from it. But on the whole it must be admitted 
that English universities have a broadening influence on 
the material which comes to them so set and narrow. 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 335 

They do a little to discover for their children that there 
are many points of view, and much which needs an open 
mind in this world. They have not precisely a demo- 
cratic influence, but taken by themselves they would not 
be inimical to democracy. And when the war is over 
they will surely be still broader in philosophy and teach- 
ing. Heaven forbid that we should see vanish all that is 
old, and has, as it were, the virginia-creeper, the wis- 
taria bloom of age upon it; there is a beauty in age and a 
health in tradition, ill dispensed with. What is hateful 
in age is its lack of understanding and of sympathy; in a 
word — its intolerance. Let us hope this wind of change 
may sweep out and sweeten the old places of our country, 
sweep away the cobwebs and the dust, our narrow ways 
of thought, our mannikinisms. But those who hate in- 
tolerance dare not be intolerant with the foibles of age; 
we should rather see them as comic, and gently laugh 
them out. I pretend to no proper knowledge of the 
American people; but, though amongst them there are 
doubtless pockets of fierce prejudice, I have on the whole 
the impression of a wide and tolerant spirit. To that 
spirit one would appeal when it comes to passing judgment 
on the educated Briton. He may be self-sufl&cient, but 
he has grit; and at bottom grit is what Americans appre- 
ciate more than anything. If the motto of the old Ox- 
ford college, "Manners makyth man," were true, one 
would often be sorry for the Briton. But his manners do 
not make him; they mar him. His goods are all absent 
from the shop-window; he is not a man of the world in 
the wider meaning of that expression. And there is, of 
com'se, a particularly noxious type of travelling Briton, 
who does his best, unconsciously, to deflower his coun- 
try wherever he goes. Selfish, coarse-fibred, loud-voiced,. 
— the sort which thanks God he is a Briton — I supposa 
because nobody else will do it for him. 



336 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

We live in times when patriotism is exalted above all 
other virtues, because there happen to lie before the pa- 
triotic tremendous chances for the display of courage and 
self-sacrifice. Patriotism ever has that advantage, as 
the world is now constituted; but patriotism and provin- 
cialism are sisters under the skin, and they who can only 
see bloom on the plumage of their own kind, who prefer 
the bad points of their countrymen to the good points of 
foreigners, merely write themselves down blind of an eye, 
and panderers to herd feeling. America is advantaged 
in this matter. She lives so far away from other nations 
that she might well be excused for thinking herself the 
only people in the world; but in the many strains of 
blood which go to make up America there is as yet a 
natural corrective to the narrower kind of patriotism. 
America has vast spaces and many varieties of type and 
climate, and life to her is still a great adventure. Amer- 
icans have their own form of self-absorption, but seem 
free as yet from the special competitive self-centrement 
which has been forced on Britons through long centuries 
by countless continental rivalries and wars. Insularity 
was driven into the very bones of our people by the gen- 
eration-long wars of Napoleon. A distinguished French 
writer, Andre Chevrillon, whose book* may be com- 
mended to any one who wishes to understand British 
peculiarities, used these words in a recent letter: "You 
English are so strange to us French, you are so utterly 
different from any other people in the world." Yes! 
We are a lonely race. Deep in our hearts, I think, we 
feel that only the American people could ever really 
understand us. And being extraordinarily self-conscious, 
perverse, and proud, we do our best to hide from Ameri- 
cans that we have any such feeling. It would distress 
the average Briton to confess that he wanted to be under- 
* England and the War. Hodder & Stoughton. 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 337 

stood, had anything so natural as a craving for fellowship 
or for being liked. We are a weird people, though we 
seem so commonplace. In looking at photographs of 
British types among photographs of other European na- 
tionalities, one is struck by something which is in no 
other of those races — exactly as if we had an extra skin; 
as if the British animal had been tamed longer than the 
rest. And so he has. His political, social, legal life was 
fixed long before that of any other Western country. 
He was old, though not mouldering, before the May- 
flower touched American shores and brought there ava- 
tars, grave and civilized as ever founded nation. There 
is something touching and terrifying about our character, 
about the depth at which it keeps its real yearnings, about 
the perversity with which it disguises them, and its in- 
ability to show its feelings. We are, deep down, under 
all our lazy mentality, the most combative and competi- 
tive race in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of the 
American. This is at once a spiritual link with America, 
and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between 
the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better 
men than Americans. Whether we are really better than 
French, Germans, Russians, Italians, Chinese, or any 
other race is, of course, more than a question; but those 
peoples are all so different from us that we are bound, I 
suppose, secretly to consider ourselves superior. But 
between Americans and ourselves, under all differences, 
there is some mysterious deep kinship which causes us to 
doubt and makes us irritable, as if we were continually 
being tickled by that question: Now am I really a better 
man than he? Exactly what proportion of American 
blood at this time of day is British, I know not; but 
enough to make us definitely cousins — always an awkward 
relationship. We see in Americans a sort of image of 
ourselves; feel near enough, yet far enough, to criticise 



338 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

and carp at the points of difference. It is as though a 
man went out and encountered, in the street, what he 
thought for the moment was himself, and, wounded in 
his amour propre* instantly began to disparage the appear- 
ance of that feUow. Probably community of language 
rather than of blood accounts for our sense of kinship, 
for a comjnon means of expression cannot but mould 
thought and feeling into some kind of unity. One can 
hardly overrate the intimacy which a common literature 
brings. The lives of great Americans, Washington and 
Franklin, Lincoln and Lee and Grant, are unsealed for 
us, just as to Americans are the lives of Marlborough and 
Nelson, Pitt and Gladstone and Gordon. Longfellow 
and Whittier and Whitman can be read by the British 
child as simply as Burns and Shelley and Keats. Emer- 
son and William James are no more difficult to us than 
Darwin and Spencer to Americans. Without an effort 
we rejoice in Hawthorne and Mark Twain, Henry James 
and Howells, as Americans can in Dickens and Thackeray, 
Meredith and Thomas Hardy. And, more than all, 
Americans own with ourselves all literature in the English 
tongue before the Mayflower sailed; Chaucer and Spenser 
and Shakespeare, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and the authors 
of the English Bible Version are their spiritual ancestors 
as much as ever they are ours. The tie of language is 
all-powerful — for language is the food formative of minds. 
A volume could be written on the formation of character 
by literary humor alone. The American and Briton, 
especially the British townsman, have a kind of bone- 
deep defiance of Fate, a readiness for anything which 
may turn up, a dry, wry smile under the blackest sky, and 
an individual way of looking at things which nothing can 
shake. Americans and Britons both, we must and will 
think for ourselves, and know why we do a thing before 
* Anwur propre, self-love, vanity. 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 339 

we do it. We have that ingrained respect for the indi- 
vidual conscience which is at the bottom of all free insti- 
tutions. Some years before the war an intelligent and 
cultivated Austrian, who had lived long in England, was 
asked for his opinion of the British, "In many ways," 
he said, "I think you are inferior to us; but one great 
thing I have noticed about you which we have not. You 
think and act and speak for yourselves." If he had 
passed those years in America instead of in England he 
must needs have pronounced the same judgment of 
Americans. Free speech, of course, like every form of 
freedom, goes in danger of its life in war-time. The other 
day, in Russia, an Englishman came on a street meeting 
shortly after the first revolution had begun. An ex- 
tremist was addressing the gathering and telling them 
that they were fools to go on fighting, that they ought 
to refuse and go home, and so forth. The crowd grew 
angry, and some soldiers were for making a rush at him; 
but the chairman, a big, burly peasant, stopped them 
with these words: "Brothers, you know that our country 
is now a country of free speech. We must listen to this 
man, we must let him say anything he will. But, brothers, 
when he's finished, we'll bash his head in ! " 

I cannot assert that either Britons or Americans are 
incapable in times like these of a similar interpretation 
of "free speech." Things have been done in our coun- 
try, and will be done in America, which should make us 
blush. But so strong is the free instinct in both countries 
that some vestiges of it will survive even this war, for 
democracy is a sham unless it means the preservation 
and development of this instinct of thinking for oneself 
throughout a people. "Government of the people, by 
the people, for the people" means nothing unless indi- 
viduals keep their consciences unfettered and think freely. 
Accustom people to be nose-led and spoon-fed, and de- 



340 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

mocracy is a mere pretense. The measure of democracy- 
is the measure of the freedom and sense of individual re- 
sponsibility in its humblest citizens. And democracy — 
I say it with solemnity — has yet to prove itself. 

A scientist, Dr. Spurrell, in a recent book, Man and 
His Forerunners, diagnoses the growth of civilizations 
somewhat as follows: A civilization begins with the en- 
slavement by some hardy race of a tame race living a 
tame life in more congenial natural surroundings. It is 
built up on slavery, and attains its maximum vitality in 
conditions little removed therefrom. Then, as individual 
freedom gradually grows, disorganization sets in and the 
civilization slowly dissolves away in anarchy. Dr. Spur- 
rell does not dogmatize about our present civilization, 
but suggests that it will probably follow the civilizations 
of the past into dissolution. I am not convinced of that, 
because of certain factors new to the history of man. 
Recent discoveries are unifying the world; such old iso- 
lated swoops of race on race are not now possible. In our 
great industrial states, it is true, a new form of slavery 
has arisen, but not of man by man, rather of man by 
machines. Moreover, all past civilizations have been 
more or less Southern, and subject to the sapping influ- 
ence of the sun. Modern civilization is essentially North- 
ern. The individualism, however, which, according to 
Dr. Spurrell, dissolved the empires of the past, exists 
already, in a marked degree, in every modern state; and 
the problem before us is to discover how democracy and 
liberty of the subject can be made into enduring props 
rather than dissolvents. It is the problem of making 
democracy genuine. And certainly, if that cannot be 
achieved and perpetuated, there is notliing to prevent 
democracy drifting into anarchism and dissolving modern 
states, till they are the prey of pouncing dictators, or of 
states not so far gone in dissolution. What, for instance, 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 341 

will happen to Russia if she does not succeed in making 
her democracy genuine? A Russia which remains an- 
archic must very quickly become the prey of her neigh- 
bors on west and east. 

Ever since the substantial introduction of democracy 
nearly a century and a half ago with the American War 
of Independence, Western civilization has been living on 
two planes or levels — the autocratic plane, with which is 
bound up the idea of nationalism, and the democratic, to 
which has become conjoined the idea of internationalism. 
Not only little wars, but great wars such as this, come 
because of inequality in growth, dissimilarity of political 
institutions between states; because this state or that is 
basing its life on different principles from its neighbors. 
The decentralization, delays, critical temper, and im- 
portance of home affairs prevalent in democratic coun- 
tries make them at once slower, weaker, less apt to strike, 
and less prepared to strike than countries where bureau- 
cratic brains subject to no real popular check devise 
world policies which can be thrust, prepared to the last 
button, on the world at a moment's notice. The free 
and critical spirit in America, France, and Britain has 
kept our democracies comparatively unprepared for any- 
thing save their own afTairs. 

We fall into glib usage of words like democracy and 
make fetiches of them without due understanding. De- 
mocracy is inferior to autocracy from the aggressively 
national point of view; it is not necessarily superior to 
autocracy as a guarantee of general well-being; it may 
even turn out to be inferior unless we can improve it. 
But democracy is the rising tide; it may be dammed or 
delayed, but cannot be stopped. It seems to be a law 
in human nature that where, in any corporate society, the 
idea of self-government sets foot it refuses to take that 
foot up again. State after state, copying the American 



342 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

example, has adopted the democratic principle; the 
world's face is that way set. And civilization is now so 
of a pattei'n that the Western world may be looked on 
as one state and the process of change therein from au- 
tocracy to democracy regarded as though it were taking 
place in a single old-time country such as Greece or 
Rome. If throughout Western civilization we can se- 
cure the single democratic principle of government, its 
single level of state morality in thought and action, we 
shall be well on our way to unanimity throughout the 
world; for even in China and Japan the democratic virus 
is at work. It is my belief that only in a world thus uni- 
form, and freed from the danger of pounce by autocracies, 
have states any chance to develop the individual con- 
science to a point which shall make democracy proof 
against anarchy and themselves proof against dissolu- 
tion; and only in such a world can a League of Nations 
to enforce peace succeed. 

But even if we do secure a single plane for Western 
civilization and ultimately for the world, there will be 
but slow and difficult progress in the lot of mankind. 
And unless we secure it, there will be only a march back- 
ward. 

For this advance to a uniform civilization the soli- 
darity of the English-speaking races is vital. Without 
that there will be no bottom on which to build. 

The ancestors of the American people sought a new 
country because they had in them a reverence for the in- 
dividual conscience; they came from Britain, the first 
large state in the Christian era to build up the idea of 
political freedom. The instincts and ideals of our two 
races have ever been the same. That great and lovable 
people, the French, with their clear thought and expres- 
sion, and their quick blood, have expressed those ideals 
more vividly than either of us. But the phlegmatic and 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 343 

the dry tenacity of our English and American tempera- 
ments has ever made our countries the most settled 
and safe homes of the individual conscience, and of its 
children — Democracy, Freedom and Internationalism. 
Whatever their faults — and their offenses cry aloud to 
such poor heaven as remains of chivalry and mercy — the 
Germans are in many ways a great race, but they possess 
two qualities dangerous to the individual conscience — 
unquestioning obedience and exaltation. When they 
embrace the democratic idea they may surpass us all in 
its logical development, but the individual conscience 
will still not be at ease with them. We must look to our 
two countries to guarantee its strength and activity, and 
if we English-speaking races quarrel and become dis- 
united, civilization will split up again and go its way to 
ruin. We are the ballast of the new order. 

I do not believe in formal alliances or in grouping na- 
tions to exclude and keep down other nations. Friend- 
ships between countries should have the only true reality 
of common sentiment, and he animated by desire for the 
general welfare of mankind. We need no formal bonds, 
but we have a sacred charge in common, to let no petty 
matters, differences of manner, or divergencies of ma- 
terial interest, destroy our spiritual agreement. Our 
pasts, our geographical positions, our temperaments make 
us, beyond all other races, the hope and trustees of man- 
kind's advance along the only line now open — democratib 
internationalism. It is childish to claim for Americans 
or Britons virtues beyond those of other nations, or to 
believe in the superiority of one national culture to an- 
other; they are different, that is aU. It is by accident 
that we find ourselves in this position of guardianship to 
the main line of human development; no need to pat 
ourselves on the back about it. But we are at a great and 
critical moment in the world's history — how critical none 



344 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

of us alive will ever realize. The civilization slowly built 
since the fall of Rome has either to break up and dissolve 
into jagged and isolated fragments through a century of 
wars; or, unified and reanimated by a single idea, to 
move forward on one plane and attain greater height and 
breadth. 

Under the pressure of this war there is, beneath the 
lip-service we pay to democracy, a disposition to lose 
faith in it because of its undoubted weakness and incon- 
venience in a struggle with states autocratically governed; 
there is even a sort of secret reaction to autocracy. On 
those lines there is no way out of a future of bitter rival- 
ries, chicanery and wars, and the probable total failure of 
our civilization. The only cure which I can see lies in 
democratizing the whole world and removing the present 
weaknesses and shams of democracy by education of the 
individual conscience in every country. Good-by to that 
chance if Americans and Britons fall foul of each other, 
refuse to pool their thoughts and hopes, and to keep the 
general welfare of mankind in view. They have got to 
stand together, not in aggressive and jealous policies, but 
in defense and championship of the self-helpful, self- 
governing, "live and let live" philosophy of life. 

The house of the future is always dark. There are 
few corner-stones to be discerned in the temple of our 
fate. But of these few one is the brotherhood and bond 
of the English-speaking races, not for narrow purposes, 
but that mankind may yet see faith and good-will en- 
shrined, yet breathe a sweeter air, and know a life where 
Beauty passes, with the sun on her wings. 

We want in the lives of men a "Song of Honor," as in 
Ralph Hodgson's poem: 

"The song of men all sorts and kinds. 
As many tempers, moods and minds 
As leaves are on a tree, 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 345 

As many faiths and castes and creeds, 
As many liuman bloods and breeds, 
As in the world may be." 

In the making of that song the English-speaking races 
will assuredly unite. What made this world we know 
not; the principle of life is inscrutable and will forever be; 
but we know that Earth is yet on the up-grade of existence, 
the mountain top of man's life not reached, that many 
centuries of growth are yet in front of us before Nature 
begins to chill this planet till it swims, at last, another 
moon, in space. In the climb to that mountain top of a 
happy life for mankind our two great nations are as guides 
who go before, roped together in perilous ascent. On 
their nerve, loyalty, and wisdom the adventure now hangs. 
What American or British knife will sever the rope? 

He who ever gives a thought to the life of man at large, 
to his miseries and disappointments, to the waste and 
cruelty of existence, will remember that if American or 
Briton fail himself, or fail the other, there can but be for 
us both, and for all other peoples, a hideous slip, a swift 
and fearful fall into an abyss, whence all shall be to begin 
over again. 

We shall not fail — neither ourselves, nor each other. 
Our comradeship will endure. 

1917. 



HENRY VAN DYKE 
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 



Henry van Dyke (1852 ), one of the eminent men 

of letters of to-day, was born at Germantown, near Phila- 
delphia. He prepared for college at the Brooklyn Poly- 
technic Institute, and was graduated from Princeton in 
1873. He next took a course in the Theological Seminary, 
followed by study at the University of Berlin. He en- 
tered the Presbyterian ministry, serving as pastor of the 
Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. His work 
as a literary critic having given him a reputation, he was 
offered and accepted a position as professor of literature 
at Princeton. In 1913-17 he served as United States 
minister to the Netherlands, and during the World War 
his writings were of great value, both as interpreting 
Europe to America and America to Europe. He has re- 
ceived degrees from many universities; he is a commander 
in the Legion of Honor, and has served as president of 
the National Institute of Arts and Sciences. 

His published works include a score of volumes, the 
most important of which are a book of essays on The Po- 
etry of Tennyson ; several volumes of poems, published in 
collected form in 1911; two books of short stories. The 
Blue Flower and The Ruling Passion, and several volumes 
of essays and sketches with such attractive titles as Fisher- 
man's Lucky Little Rivers, and Days Off. Another volume, 
Essays in Application, deals with deeper themes; it is 
from this that the essay, "Is the World Growing Better?" 
is taken. 

His writing is characterized by finish of style, breadth 
of outlook, and ripe and serene wisdom. 



HENRY VAN DYKE 

IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 

(From Essays in Application) 

No man knows, of a certainty, the answer to this 
question. 

If it were an inquiry into the condition of the world's 
pocketbook, or farm, or garden, or machine house, or 
library, or schoolroom, the answer would be easy. Six 
million more spindles whirling in the world's workshop 
in 1903 than in 1900; eight hundred million more bushels 
of wheat in the world's grain-fields than in 1897; an aver- 
age school attendance gaining 145 per cent between 1840 
and 1888, while the population of Europe increased only 
33 per cent. So the figures run in every department. 
No doubt the world is busier, richer, better fed, and prob- 
ably it knows more, than ever before. 

I am not one of those highly ethereal and supercilious 
people who can find nothing in this to please them, and 
who cry lackadaisically: "What is all this worth?" I 
am honest enough to confess to a sense of satisfaction 
when my little vegetable garden rewards my care with 
an enlarged crop, or when my children bring home a 
good report from school. Why should not a common- 
sense philanthropj ^ead us to feel in the same way about 
the improved condition and the better reports of the big 
world to which we belong? Of course our satisfaction is 
checked and shadowed, often very darkly shadowed, by 
the remembrance of those who are left behind in the 
march of civilization — the retarded races, the benighted 
classes, the poor relations, of the world. But our sym- 
pathy with them is much more likely to be helpful if it 

349 



350 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

is hopeful, than if it is despairing. I do not think it 
necessary to cultivate melancholy or misanthropy as a 
preparation for beneficence. 

A generous man ought to find something cheerful and 
encouraging to his own labors, in the knowledge that the 
world is growing "better off." 

But is it growing better? That's another question, 
and a far more important one. What is happening to 
the world itself, the owner of all this gear, the prosperous 
old adventurer whose wealth, according to Mr. Gladstone, 
increased twice as much during the first seventy years of 
the nineteenth century as it had done during the eighteen 
hundred years preceding? Is this marvellous increase 
of goods beneficial to the character of the race? Or is it 
injurious? Or has it, perhaps, no deep or definite influ- 
ence one way or the other? 

You know how hard it is to come to a clear and just 
conclusion on such points as these, even in the case of an 
individual man. Peter Silvergilt's wealth has grown 
from nothing to three hundred million dollars during the 
last fifty years; but are you sure that Peter's personality 
is better, finer, nobler, more admirable than it was when 
he was a telegraph-boy earning ten dollars a week? 
William Wiseman has a world-wide fame as a scholar; 
it is commonly reported that he has forgotten more than 
most men ever knew; but can you trust William more 
implicitly to be fair and true and generous than when 
he was an obscure student just beginning to work for a 
degree in philosophy? 

When we try to apply such questions, not to a single 
person, but to the world at large, positive and mathemat- 
ical answers are impossible. The field of inquiry is too 
vast. The facts of racial character are too secret and 
subtle. 

But a provisional estimate of the general condition of 



HENRY VAN DYKE 351 

the world from the point of view of goodness, comparing 
the present with the past — a probable guess at the direc- 
tion in which the race is moving morally — this is some- 
thing that we may fairly make. Indeed, if you think and 
care much about your brother men you can hardly help 
making it, and upon the color of this guess the tone of 
your philosophy depends. If the color is dark, you be- 
long among the pessimists, who cannot be very happy, 
though they may sometimes be rather useful. If the 
color is bright, you are what men call an optimist, though 
I think George Eliot's word, "meliorist," would be a 
more fitting name. 

For what is it, after all, that we can venture to claim 
for this old world of ours, at most? Certainly not that 
it is altogether good, nor even that it is as good as it might 
be and therefore ought to be. Police stations and prisons 
and wars are confessions that some things are wrong and 
need correction. The largest claim that a cheerful man 
who is also a thoughtful man — a child of hope with his 
eyes open — dares to make for the world is that it is better 
than it used to be, and that it has a fair prospect of 
further improvement. This is meliorism, the philosophy 
of actual and possible betterment; not a high-stepping, 
trumpet-blowing, self-flattering creed, immediately avail- 
able for advertising purposes; but a modest and sober 
faith, useful for consolation in those hours of despondency 
and personal disappointment when the grasshopper and 
the critic both become a burden, and for encouragement 
to more earnest effort in those hours of cheer when a 
high tide of the spirit fills us with good-will to our fellow 
men. 

I asked John Friendly the other day: *''Do you think 
the world is growing better?" 

"Certainly," said he, with a smile like sunrise on his 
honest face, "I haven't the slightest doubt of it." 



352 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

"But what makes you so sure of it?" 

"Why, it must be so! Look at all the work that is 
being done to-day to educate people and help them into 
better ways of living. All this effort must count for 
something. The wagon must move with so many horses 
pulling at it. The world can't help growing better!" 

Then he left me, to go down to a meeting of his " Citizens' 
Committee for the Application of the Social Boycott to 
Political Offenders" (which frequently adjourns without 
a quorum). Immediately afterward I passed the door of 
the "Michael T. Moriarty Republi-cratic Club" — wide 
open and crowded. On my way up the avenue I saw a 
liquor-saloon on every block — and all busy. The news- 
stands were full of placards announcing articles in the 
magazines — "Graft in Chicago," "The Criminal Calendar 
of Millionaires," "St. Louis, the Bribers' Paradise," "The 
Plunder of Philadelphia." Head-lines in the yellow jour- 
nals told of "Immense Slaughter in Manchuria," "Russia 
Ripe for Revolution," "The Black Hand Terror in the 
Bronx," "Gilded Gambling-Dens of the Four Hundred," 
"Diamonds and Divorce." 

John Friendly's cheerful a priori* confidence in the bet- 
terment of the world seemed to need reinforcement. Some 
of the horses are pulling his way, no doubt, but a good 
many appear to be pulling the other way. Under such 
conditions the wagon might stick fast, or go backward. 
Possibly it might be pulled to pieces. Who can measure, 
in the abstract, the comparative strength of the good and 
the evil forces? Who can tell beforehand which way the 
tug-of-war must go? 

The only sound and satisfactory method is to bring 
out the foot rule of fact and apply it to the tracks of the 
wagon. Has it moved? How fast, how far, which way? 

"Growing better" is a phrase about which a company 
* A priori, reasoning from cause to effect. 



HENRY VAN DYKE 353 

of college professors would probably have a long prelim- 
inary dispute; but plain people understand it well enough 
for practical purposes. There are three factors in it. 
When we say that a man grows better, we mean that, in 
the main, he is becoming more just, and careful to do the 
right thing; more kind, and ready to do the helpful thing; 
more self-controlled, and willing to sacrifice his personal 
will to the general welfare. Is the world growing better 
in this sense? Is there more justice, more kindness, 
more self-restraint, among the inhabitants of earth than 
in the days of old? 

Of course, when we consider a question like this, before 
even a modest guess at the answer is possible, we must be 
willing to take a long view and a wide view. The world, 
like the individual man, has its moods and its vagaries, 
its cold fits and its hot fits, its backslidings and its re- 
pentances, its reactions and its revivals. An advance 
made in one century may be partly lost in the next, and 
regained with interest in a later century. One nation 
may be degenerating, under local infections of evil, while 
others are improving. There may be years, or regions, 
of short harvest in the field of morals, just as there are 
in the cotton-field or the corn-field. The same general 
conditions that work well for the development of most 
men, may prove unfavorable to certain races. Civiliza- 
tion seems to oppress and demoralize some tribes to the 
point of extinction. Liberty is a tonic too strong for 
certain temperaments; it intoxicates them. But what 
we have to look at is not the local exception, nor the tem- 
porary reaction: it is the broad field as far as we can see 
it, the general movement as far as we can trace it. And 
as I try to look at the question in this way, clearly and 
steadily, it seems to me that the world is really growing 
better: not in every eddy, but in the main current of its 
life; not in a straight line, but with a winding course; not 



354 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

in every respect, but in at least two of the three main 
points of goodness; not swiftly, but slowly, surely, really 
growing better. 

Take the matter of justice. The world's sense of 
equity, its desire to act fairly and render to every man 
his due, is expressed most directly in its laws. Who can 
fail to see a process of improvement in the spirit and tem- 
per of legislation, a conscientious effort to make the law 
more efficient in the protection of human rights and more 
just in the punishment of offenses? 

In Shakespeare's time, for example, a woman's exist- 
ence, in the eye of the law, was merged in that of her 
husband. A man could say of his wife: "She is my 
goods, my chattels; she is my house, my household stuff, 
my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my anything." The 
very presents which he gave her were still his property. 
He could beat her. He could deprive her of the guardian- 
ship of her children. It was not until the end of the 
seventeenth century that the law secured her right to 
the separate use of her property, and not until the middle 
of the nineteenth century that the legislation of Great 
Britain and America began to recognize and protect her 
as a person, entitled to work and receive wages, to dis- 
pose of her own earnings, to have an equal share with 
her husband in the guardianship of their children. Surely 
it is an immense gain in justice that woman should be 
treated as a human being. 

This gain is most evident, of course, in those nations 
which are leading the march of civilization. But I think 
we can see traces of it elsewhere. The abolition of child- 
marriage and the practical extinction of the suttee* in 
India, the decline of the cruelly significant fashion of 

* Suttee, the custom among Hindoo wives of casting themselves 
into the funeral pyre where the body of the husband was being 
burned. 



HENRY VAN DYKE 355 

"foot-binding" in China, the beginning of the education 
of girls in Egypt, are hints that even the heathen world 
is learning to beheve that woman may have a claim to 
justice. 

In the same way we must interpret the laws for the 
protection of the young against cruelty, oppression, and 
injustice. Beginning with the Factory Act of 1833 and 
the Mines and CoUieries Act of 1842 in England, there 
has been a steadily increasing effort to diminish and pre- 
vent the degradation of the race by the enslavement of 
childhood to labor. Even the parent's right of control, 
says the modern world, must be held in harmony with the 
child's right to life and growth, mental, moral, and physi- 
cal. The law itself must recognize the injustice of deal- 
ing with young delinquents as if they were old and hard- 
ened criminals. No more herding of children ten and 
twelve years old in the common jail ! Juvenile courts 
and probation officers, asylums and reformatories: an in- 
telligent and systematic effort to reclaim the young life 
before it has fallen into hopeless bondage to crime : this is 
the spirit of civilized legislation to-day. In 1903 no less 
than ten of the American states enacted special statutes 
with this end in view. 

The great change for the better in modern criminal 
law is another proof that the world is growing more just. 
Brutal and degrading methods of execution, such as cruci- 
fixion, burying alive, impaling, disembowelling, breaking 
on the wheel: the judicial torture of prisoners and unwill- 
ing witnesses by the thumb-screw, the strappado, and the 
rack: cruel and agonizing penalties of various kinds have 
been abolished, not merely by way of concession to hu- 
manity, but with the purpose of maintaining justice in 
purity and dignity. 

The world has been learning to discriminate more care- 
fully between the degrees of crime. In the eighteenth 



356 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

century men were condemned to death for forgery; for 
stealing from a shop to the value of five shillings or from 
a house to the value of forty shillings; for malicious in- 
jury to trees, cattle, or fish-ponds; for the cutting of hop- 
bands from the poles in a plantation. Within eighty 
years capital punishment has been inflicted in England 
for sheep-stealing and for robbery from a house. The 
laws of Pennsylvania at the time of the Revolution enu- 
merated twenty crimes punishable with death; in Virginia 
and Kentucky there were twenty-seven. Modern legis- 
lation recognizes the futility as well as the fundamental 
injustice of such crass and indiscriminate retribution, and 
reserves the final penalty for the supreme crime against 
the life of the individual or the state. 

At the same time there has been a twofold rectification 
of the scope of the criminal law. Some of the offenses 
most severely punished in old times have ceased to be 
grounds of prosecution: for example, heresy, witchcraft, 
religious nonconformity. On the other hand, misdeeds 
which formerly were disregarded have been made pun- 
ishable. It was not until 1833 that the English law began 
to treat drunkenness as a crime, rather than a misfortune. 
In 1857 a fraud on the part of a trustee, and in 1875 the 
falsification of accounts, were declared to be criminal. 
The laws of various States are recognizing and defining a 
vast number of new misdemeanors, such as the adultera- 
tion of foods, gambling, violation of laws in restraint of 
the liquor traffic, selling cigarettes to children, tapping 
electric wires, disfiguring the landscape with advertise- 
ments or printing them on the American flag, making 
combinations in restraint of trade, sleeping in a public 
bakery, spitting on the floor of a street-car. I do not 
say that all of these offenses are wisely defined or fairly 
punished; but I do say that the process of modern legis- 
lation in regard to such matters indicates a growing desire 



HENRY VAN DYKE 357 

among men that justice shall prevail in the commu- 
nity. 

A large part of what appears to be the increase of 
crime in recent years (according to statistics), is due to 
this new definition of misdemeanors. There are more 
offenders in the most peaceful and well-governed states, 
because there are more offenses defined. Another part 
comes from the greater efficiency in the execution of laws 
and the greater completeness in the tabulation of reports. 
The remaining part comes from a cause on which I will 
touch later. But in spite of this apparent increase of 
crime, no sensible man believes that the actual amount 
of violence and disorder among men is as great as it used 
to be. Pike's History of Crime in England estimates that 
in the fourteenth century murders were at least sixteen 
times as frequent as in our own day. 

I pass by such notorious and splendid triumphs of the 
world's moral sense as the abolition of the slave-trade, 
and the estabhshment of international law, to mention 
two humble, concrete illustrations of what I mean by the 
advance of justice. The purchase by the American Gov- 
ernment of the lands of the Spanish friars in the Phil- 
ippines was a just way of accomplishing what would have 
been done a century ago by confiscation. The passage 
by the Congress of the United States of an act granting 
copyright to foreigners was a recognition, resisted by 
selfishness and ignorance for fifty years, of the funda- 
mental principles of righteousness and fair dealing. 

I know there are many items, and some of them most 
grievous, to be set down on the other side. There are 
still wars of conquest; corruptions and delays in legisla- 
tion; oppressions and inequalities in government; rob- 
beries and cruelties which go unpunished. But these are 
not new things; they are as old as sin; evils not yet shaken 
off. I do not dream that the world is already quite just. 



358 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

But by the light that comes from the wiser, fairer laws of 
many lands, I guess that the world is growing more just. 

In regard to the increase of kindness in the human 
race, the evidence is even more clear and strong. There 
are more people in the world who love mercy, and they 
are having better success in making their spirit prevail. 
More is being done to-day to prevent and mitigate human 
suffering, to shelter and protect the weak and helpless, to 
minister wisely to the sick and wounded in body and in 
mind, than ever before in the history of mankind. Part 
of the evidence of this lies in some of the facts already 
noted in connection with the humanizing of the law, and 
in the extraordinary story of the work begun by John 
Howard, a hundred and thirty years ago, which has 
cleansed away so much of the shame of a cruel, filthy, and 
irrational prison system. But there is evidence, also, of 
a more direct and positive sort, going beyond the removal 
of ancient evils and manifesting a spirit of creative kind- 
ness eager to find new ways of helping others. 

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, says the 
best authority on statistics, charity has grown twice as 
fast as wealth in England, three times as fast in France. 
In the United States the amount of the larger gifts ($5,000 
or more) rose from $29,000,000, in 1893, to $107,000,000, 
in 1901. The public and private charities of New York 
alone (excluding the money spent on buildings) are esti- 
mated at $50,000,000 a year. 

With all this increase of money comes an equal increase 
of care and thought in regard to the best way of using it 
for the real benefit of mankind. Reckless almsgiving is 
recognized as an amiable but idiotic form of self-indul- 
gence. The penny dropped into the beggar's hat gives 
place to an inquiry into the beggar's condition. This 
costs more, but it is worth more. Waste in money given 
is no more virtuous than waste in money earned. Schools 



HENRY VAN DYKE 359 

of philanthropy are established to study and teach the 
economy of generosity. Asylums are investigated and 
supervised. Relief funds are intrusted to responsible 
committees, who keep books and render accounts. Men 
and women are trying to take the head into partnership 
with the heart in beneficence. A rich father and mother 
lose their child by scarlet fever: they give a million dol- 
lars to endow an institution for the study and prevention 
of infectious diseases. An excursion steamboat is burned 
in New York harbor and a thousand people, most of them 
poor, lose their lives; within two weeks $125,000 is given 
for relief; it is not thrown away with open hands, but ad- 
ministered by a committee with as much care as they 
would bestow on their own affairs; every dollar is ac- 
counted for, and a balance of $17,000 is left, to meet 
future calls, or to be devoted to some kindred purpose. 
These are illustrations of intelligent mercy. 

Consider the advance in the general spirit of kindness 
which is indicated by such a fact as the founding and suc- 
cessful operation of the system of Working Men's Insur- 
ance in Germany. A certain sum of money is set aside 
for each workman every week (the employer and the 
employee each contributing half), and the Government 
adds a supplement of twelve dollars on each pension. 
Ten million workmen are thus insured against sickness; 
seventeen million against accident; ten million against 
disability from old age. Six hundred and seventy thou- 
sand persons receive the benefit of this fund in yearly 
pensions. Incidentally there has been an immense bene- 
fit in the increase of precautions to prevent accidents and 
to reduce dangerous occupations. The employer who is 
not yet willing to protect his workmen, for kindness' sake, 
will do it to escape heavier taxes. And the community 
which silently compels him to do this, the community 
which says to the laboring man, " If you will perform your 



360 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

duty, you shall not starve when you are sick and old," 
is certainly growing more kind as well as more just. 

Look at the broad field of what we may call interna- 
tional mercy. It has been estimated that since the days 
when the failure of the harvest drove Abraham from Pal- 
estine down to Egypt to seek food for his starving people, 
there have been three hundred and fifty great famines in 
various parts of the world. How many of the hungry 
nations received help from the outside world before the 
nineteenth century began ? But now, within a week after 
the distress is known, money, food, and help of all kinds 
begin to flow in from all quarters of the globe. The 
famine in India in 1900-1901 called forth contributions 
from Great Britain, Germany, France, America, to the 
amount of $72,000,000. The greater part came from 
England, of course, but the whole world stood ready to 
aid her. 

After the great fire of London in 1666, and the Lisbon 
earthquake in 1755> there was some outside assistance 
given, it is true. But in the main, the stricken cities had 
to suffer alone and help themselves. When the little city 
of Galveston, Texas, was swept by flood in 1900, within 
three weeks $750,000 was poured in for its relief, and 
the whole fund amounted to nearly a million and a 
half. 

Turn again to look at the effort which the world is 
making to get rid of the hell of war, or, if that be not 
possible, at least to mitigate its horrors and torments. 
The High Tribunal of Arbitration at The Hague is a 
mile-stone on the world's path of progress toward the 
peaceful method of solving international disputes. Each 
year sees some new advance in that direction. Since 
1903 Great Britain and France, Holland and Denmark, 
France and Spain, Great Britain and Italy, France and 
Holland, Great Britain and Spain, Italy and France, have 



HENRY VAN DYKE 361 

made treaties by which they pledge themselves to refer 
all differences of certain kinds which may arise between 
them to this tribunal for settlement. During the same 
time at least seven international questions have been re- 
ferred to special arbitrators. 

True, war has not yet been eliminated from the pro- 
gramme of the race. Great armaments are maintained 
at incredible expense, and nations insist, as Ruskin said, 
that it is good policy to purchase terror of one another at 
the cost of hundreds of millions every year. Some of the 
honest friends of peace are not yet reasonable enough to 
see the folly of this arrangement. A peace which depends 
upon fear is nothing but a suppressed war. Every now 
and then the restraining fear gives way, in one place or 
another, and thousands of men are dressed in uniform 
and marshalled with music to blow one another's brains 
out. But, in spite of all this, the growth of the spirit of 
mercy in the world makes itself known in the application 
of more humane rules to the inhumanity of war. Private 
wars, prevalent in the Middle Ages, and piracy, tolerated 
until the nineteenth century, have been abolished. The 
slaughter, torture, and enslavement of prisoners of war, 
which was formerly practised by even Christian nations, 
gave place in the middle of the seventeenth century to the 
custom of releasing all prisoners at the close of the war 
without ransom. Even Mahometan nations agreed by 
treaty that they would no longer subject their captives 
to bondage or torture. Persia and Turkey, in 1828, 
pledged themselves to the exchange of prisoners. 

There has been a steady advance in the strictness and 
efficiency of the rules protecting the life and property of 
non-combatants, an immense decrease in the atrocities 
inflicted by conquering armies upon the peaceful inhabi- 
tants of vanquished countries. Let any man read the 
story of the siege and sack of a town in Holland by the 



362 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 

Spanish soldiers as it is given in Motley's Dutch Republic, 
and compare it with the story of the capture of Paris in 
1870, or even the taking of Pekin in 1900, and he will 
understand that war itself has felt the restraining touch 
of mercy. Let him reflect upon the significance of the 
work of the Red Cross Society, with its pledge of kindly 
succor to all who are wounded in battle, "treating friend 
and foe alike"; let him consider the remarkable fact that 
this society in Japan has a service as perfectly organized 
as any in the world, with a million members, and an an- 
nual income of more than $1,500,000, and he cannot but 
acknowledge that the spirit of pity and compassion has 
gained ground since the days of Charlemagne and Bar- 
barossa and Napoleon — yes, even since the days of Libby 
Prison and Elmira. And if none of these things are enough 
to comfort or encourage him, let him take in the meaning 
of the simple fact that not one of the great nations of 
the world to-day would dare to proclaim a war in the 
name of Religion. By this blessed change alone, I should 
make bold to guess that the world is surely growing 
better. 

But how is it with the third factor of real betterment: 
self-restraint, the willingness to sacrifice one's own pas- 
sion and pleasure for the good of others? Here, I con- 
fess, my guessing is confused and troubled. There was a 
vast improvement from the fourteenth to the nineteenth 
century, no doubt. But whether the twentieth century 
is carrying on the advance seems uncertain. 

It may be that on this point we have entered into a 
period of reaction. The theory of individual liberty 
threatens to assert itself in dangerous forms. Literature 
and art are throwing their enchantments about the old 
lie that life's highest value is found in moments of in- 
tense self-gratification. Speed is glorified, regardless of 
direction. Strength is worshipped at the expense of 



HENRY VAN DYKE 363 

reason. Success is deified as the power to do what one 
likes. Gilding covers a multitude of sins. 

On the one hand, we have a so-called "upper class," 
which says: ''The world was made to amuse me; nothing 
else matters." On the other hand, we have an appar- 
ent increase of the criminal class, which lives at war with 
the social order. Corporations and labor unions engage 
in a struggle so fierce that the rights and interests of the 
community are forgotten by both parties. In our own 
country lynching, which is organized murder for unproved 
offenses, grows more common; divorces increase to 60,000 
in one year; and there is an epidemic of shocking acci- 
dents and disasters, greater than any hitherto recorded, 
and due apparently to the spirit of unrestraint and reck- 
lessness which is sweeping furiously in its motor-car along 
the highways of modern life. 

Is this selfish and headlong spirit growing? Will it 
continue to accelerate the pace at which men live, and 
diminish the control by which they are guided? Will it 
weaken more and more the bonds of reverence, and mu- 
tual consideration, and household fidelity, and civic 
virtue, until the states which have been civilized by the 
sanctions of love and the convictions of duty are whirled 
backward, by the passion of self-indulgence, into the 
barbarism of luxurious pleasure or the anarchy of social 
strife ? 

These are the questions that rise to trouble us in our 
moments of despondency and foreboding. But I think 
that it is neither wise nor brave to give them an answer 
of despair. Two are stronger than one. The growth 
of justice and of kindness, I guess, will in the long run 
prevail over the decline of self-restraint, and the selfish, 
reckless spirit will be overcome. 

At all events, when Christmas comes I shall sit down 
with John Friendly to enjoy its cheer, rather than with 



364 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY ^ 

any sour pessimist. For one thing is sure. The hope 
of humanity hes in the widening, deepening influence of 
that blessed Life which was born nineteen hundred years 
ago in Bethlehem. The Lesson which that Life teaches 
us is that the only way to make the world better is for 
each man to do his best. 



READING LIST OF ESSAYS 



READING LIST OF ESSAYS 

Abbott, C. C: 

Days Out of Doors. 

Freedom of the Fields. 
Abbott, Lyman: 

Problems of Life. 

Spirit of Democracy. 
Addison, Joseph: 

The Spectator. 
Arnold, Matthew: 

Essays in Criticism. 
Atlantic Classics: 

Essays by various authors. 

Bacon, Francis: 

Essays. 
Baker, Ray S. (David Grayson) : 

Adventures in Contentment. 

The Friendly Road. 
Barrie, J. M. : 

Margaret Ogilvy. 

My Lady Nicotine. 
Beebe, William: 

Jungle Peace. 

Edge of the Jungle. 
Bennett, Arnold: 

How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day. 

Literary Taste and How to Form It. 

Self and Self Management. 

The Human Machine. 
Benson, A. C: 

At Large. 

Beside Still Waters. 

From a College Window. 

The Altar Fire. 

The Silent Isle. 

367 



368 HEADING LIST OF ESSAYS 

Bergengren, Ralph: 

The Comforts of Home. 

The Perfect Gentleman. 
Birrell, Augustine: 

Men, Women and Books. 

Obiter Dicta. 
Black, Hugh: 

Friendship. 
■ Work. 
Bolles, Frank: 

At the North of Bearcamp Water. 

Land of Lingering Snow. 
Brewer, D. J.: 

American Citizenship. 
Briggs, L. B. R.: 

School, College and Character. 
Browne, Thomas: 

ReHgio Medici. 
Bryce, James: 

Hindrances to Good Citizenship. 
Burroughs, John: 

Accepting the Universe. 

Indoor Studies. 

Locusts and Wild Honey. 

Signs and Seasons. 

Wake-Robin. 

Winter Sunshine. 

Carlyle, Thomas: 

Heroes and Hero- Worship. 

Sartor Resartus. 
.Chesterton, G. K.: 

A Miscellany of Men. 

Defense of Nonsense. 
Cowley, Abraham: 

Discourses. 
Croly, H. D.: 

Promise of American Life. 
Crothers, S. McC: 

Among Friends. 

By the Christmas Fire. 



READING LIST OF ESSAYS 369 

The Gentle Reader. 
The Pardoner's Wallet. 
Curtis, G.W.: 

From the Easy Chair. 
Prue and I. 

De Quincey, Thomas: 

English Mail Coach. 

Flight of a Tartar Tribe. 
Dobson, Austin: 

Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Eaton, W. P.: 

Barn Doors and By Ways. 

Green Trails and Upland Pastures. 
Eliot, C. W.: 

American Contributions to Civilization. 

The Durable Satisfactions of Life. 
Emerson, R. W. : 

Conduct of Life. 

Essays, First and Second Series. 

Society and Solitude. 

Galsworthy, John: 

A Sheaf. 

Another Sheaf. 

Inn of Tranquillity. 
Goldsmith, Oliver: 

Citizen of the World. 
Gosse, Edmund: 

Gossip in a Library. 

Portraits and Sketches. 
Griggs, E.H.: 

Self Culture. 

Hazlitt, William: 

Lectures on English Comic Writers. 

Lectures on English Poets. 

Table Talk. 
Hearn, Lafcadio: 

A Japanese Miscellany. 

Out of the East. 



370 READING LIST OF ESSAYS 

HolUday, R. C: 

Walking-Stick Papers. 
Holmes, 0. W.: 

Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 

Poet at the Breakfast-Table. 

Professor at the Breakfast-Table. 
HoweUs, W. D.: 

Criticism and Fiction. 

London Films. 

My Literary Passions. 

Suburban Sketches. 
Hudson, W.H.: 

Naturalist in La Plata. 
Hunt, Leigh: 

Men, Women and Books. 

Table Talk. 

Wit and Humor. 



Irving, Washington: 
Sketch Book. 



James, William: 

Talks to Teachers. 

The WiU to Believe. 
Jeffries, Richard: 

Story of My Heart. 
Jerome, J. K. : 

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. 

.Lamb, Charles: 

Essays of Elia, First and Second Series. 
Lang, Andrew: 

Letters to Dead Authors. 
Leacock, Stephen: 

Literary Lapses. 
Lowell, J. R.: 

Among My Books. 

Fireside Travels. 

My Study Windows. 



READING LIST OF ESSAYS 371 



Lucas, E. V. : 

A Little of Everything. 
Character and Comedy. 
Cloud and Silver. 
Fireside and Sunshine. 

Mabie, H. W.: 

Books and Culture. 

My Study Fire. 
Macaulay, T. B.: 

Literary and Historical Essays. 
Martin, E. S.: 

Windfalls of Observation. 
Matthews, Brander: 

Americans of the Future. 

Inquiries and Opinions. 
Milne, A. A.: 

Not That It Matters. 
Mitchell, D.G.: 

Dream Life. 

Reveries of a Bachelor. 
Montaigne, Michel: 

Essays. 
More, P. E.: 

Shelburne Essays. 
Morley, Christopher: 

Mince Pie. 

Pipefuls. 

Newman, John H. : 

Historical Sketches. 

Idea of a University. 
Newton, A. E. : 

Amenities of Book Collecting. 
Nicholson, Meredith: 

The Provincial American. 

The Valley of Democracy. 

The Man in the Street. 

Pater, Walter H.: 

Imaginary Portraits. 
The Renaissance. 



372 READING LIST OF ESSAYS 

ReppHer, Agnes: 

Americans and Others. 

Books and Men. 

Compromises. 

Essays in Idleness. 

Points of View. 
Roosevelt, Theodore: 

American Ideals. 

History as Literature, and Other Essays. 
Ruskin, John: 

Crown of Wild Olive. 

Frondes Agrestes. 

Sesame and Lilies. 

Steele, Richard: 

The Tatler. 
Stephen, Leslie: 

Hours in a Library. 
Stevenson, R. L.: 

Across the Plains. 

FamiUar Studies of Men and Books. 

Memories and Portraits. 

The Amateur Emigrant. 

Virginibus Puerisque. 
Strunsky, Simeon: 

Belshazzar Court. 

Post-Impressions. 

The Patient Observer. 

Thru the Looking-Glass. 

Thackeray, W. M.: 

English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century. 

Roundabout Papers. 
Thoreau, H. D.: 

Cape Cod. 

Excursions. 

Walden. 

Van Dyke, Henry: 

Camp Fires and Guide Posts. 

Days Off. 

Essays in Application. 



READING LIST OF ESSAYS 373 



Fisherman's Luck. 
Little Rivers. 

Warner, C. D.: 

As We Go. 

As We Were Sajnng. 
Wilson, Woodrow: 

Mere Literature. 

When a Man Comes to Himself. 
Woodberry, G. E.: 

The Appreciation of Literature. 



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